AN angry personal attack by Bertie Ahern on Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins marked yesterday's Dail proceedings, when the Taoiseach called him "a failed person" and a "nitwit".

Mr Ahern made the remarks after the two men clashed over the latest house price figures which, said Mr Higgins, had shown that the Government was doing nothing to lower the price of homes for young people.

The Taoiseach accused Mr Higgins of trying to "drag" people back to the "failed" policies he had dreamt up years ago in the south of Kerry. Mr Higgins asked: "Are members of this Government so cossetted by their massive salaries that they are oblivious to the suffering out there?"

Mr Ahern said the Government was continuing to try to ensure that supply outstripped demand, and said that "it is only that way that we can stem the increases".

Figures

The Taoiseach gave figures for the number of new houses built and said these compared more than favourably with many other countries. They were ahead of the US, Europe and the UK, he claimed.

Mr Higgins was unhappy with the Taoiseach's answers which, he claimed, were missing the point that many were unable to afford the high cost of new houses.

Mr Higgins then suggested that maybe it was "the clatter of the developers' helicopters as they descend on your tent at the Galway races which is drowning out the calls to stop this scandal of unbridled profiteering in the housing market". Mr Ahern then rounded on him, and said he had "a failed ideology" and always "likes to return to the days of pathetic poverty".

Mr Higgins, he claimed, wanted to go back to a time when no houses were being built in this country, where people had to emigrate, had no jobs and no future. That, he said, would be "back to the great tradition of Joe Higgins and his weary warriors".

"You have the most hopeless policy I ever heard pursued by any nitwit," he said. "You are a failed person. You were rejected and your political philosophy has been rejected. "You are not going to pull people back into the failed old policies that you dreamed up in South Kerry when you were a young fellow," he told Mr Higgins. "Now go away," he added. Later, the Socialist TD said he was very proud both of his roots and his policies and accused Mr Ahern of going on "a diversionary rant".

"The values we received in South Kerry when I was growing up were that every human being deserved to have a roof over their head and should be able to live in reasonable comfort. That is all I was demanding and continue to demand in the Dail," said Mr Higgins.

"The Taoiseach occasionally does react to my questioning by getting quite annoyed," he added. "But I have to say that in the nine years I have been questioning him, I don't think I have heard him previously reply in those terms," the Socialist Party TD said.