Forty new homes will have to be built for every 100 existing houses in the State over the next 25 years, according to the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton.
In his millennium statement, as the Dail adjourned until the New Year, Mr Bruton also spoke about the opportunities and pitfalls in the globalisation of the economy and the need for voluntarism.
He paid tribute to those involved in the efforts through the 20th century to bring peace to Ireland and he spoke of abuse of the elderly as one of the least reported forms of abuse.
The Meath TD told the Dail that the creation of 40 homes for every existing 100 was a national task "that we are asking a minority in our society to finance out of their private means".
That minority was people aged between 20 and 40. "Older people are enjoying taxfree capital gains as house prices rise, while
those between 20 and 40 are sometimes being forced to work inhuman hours, and sacrifice other aspects of their lives" to service mortgages.
"There is a fundamental issue of intergenerational fairness here. Is it right that one generation of young people should be asked to bear this one-off construction cost on behalf of previous generations and of future generations? The homes now being built will last for three or four generations. They will be inherited cheaply."
Housing policy would also affect crime, especially when socially excluded people were pushed into one housing estate. "Zero tolerance makes little sense if ghettoes have been deliberately created." Crime, he said "is encouraged by a design of urban Ireland that prevents natural communities being created across class lines, which keeps social housing far away from private housing".
The Fine Gael leader also referred to Irish society's "cash illusion. We may only appear to have an increased GDP because so much work in Ireland is now being paid for, where it was previously done for free." He said the work of volunteers was ignored in calculations of the GDP. "GDP only counts what is paid for in cash."
In his statement, the Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, rejected what he called the Taoiseach's "low-tax, high-enterprise" model for future development. "It amounts to the embracing of an American model of individual responsibility. It promotes a low-tax regime to encourage individual effort. It sees a minimal role for the State in the daily affairs of the community.
"It is the stuff of trickle-down economics. It intends the share of public wealth invested in our communities to decline dramatically. It is a vision of the future imprisoned by the poverty of the past."
He said Fianna Fail's view was that taxation and public spending were heavy burdens to be borne at best reluctantly. "There is no sense that a contrary view might exist, that perhaps taxation and public spending are how we express our solidarity as a community. That they may be the instruments that we use to invest in our children and their education, to provide for our sick and care for our infirm."
Outlining 10 points, "pillars", to build a new Republic, the Dublin South-East TD included a constitutional guarantee of fundamental social and economic rights for every citizen; full employment in a "vibrant and enterprising economy"; a sustained programme of public investment in transportation, building and environmental requirements; a guarantee by the State for every disabled and elderly citizen of a place of appropriate care and shelter.
The "pillars" for a new Ireland also included a constitutional recognition of rights of children and a guarantee of protection and care; a universal health service, open to all on an equal basis with access based on medical need and not ability to pay; the promotion of a tolerant and pluralist civic culture and an active role in the EU.
Mr Trevor Sargent (Green, Dublin North) said there was a need to "widen democracy" in the sphere of environmental protection and not just in the social, political and economic spheres.
He highlighted the threat of unrestricted free trade, and the "buying up of the earth's resources by the transnational corporations". Society, he said, should be "ever more mindful" of the "green" slogans, "think globally, act locally" and "we do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children".
When all party leaders concluded their millennium statements, the Dail was adjourned until Wednesday, January 26th.