Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that we are beginning to move in the direction of genuine affordability, in rental and purchase. I will, however, make some observations. I believe it is a mistake to think about the pricing of these units as a reduction or a discount from market rent because they are not being delivered by market operators. They are being led by the local authorities. Clonburris, for example, will be a local authority-led project on public land. Given that only yesterday I received replies to parliamentary questions back from the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to say that the average cost of construction of new units, including apartments and houses, by local authorities last year was €200,000, one would have hoped that the purchase price for the homes in Clonburris could be below that. I say this because the average loan offering from South Dublin County Council under the Rebuilding Ireland home loan this year was €200,000. To purchase either of the price range houses the Minister has just outlined, the households would need a deposit of some €50,000 to €60,000, which is not reasonable.

Likewise with rents, many of us are concerned that with the St. Michael's estate the EIB finance is only for 25 or 30 years. To get those rents down below €900 - which is where they should be - some form of soft loan refinancing is probably required by the Department to stretch the maturity of the loans, perhaps for another ten years. Will the Minister explore those two options so that even with the Rebuilding Ireland home loan - or for the lower-income working families - we can get the price points down to genuine affordability, especially for those people who are just above the income thresholds for social housing and who currently cannot afford to rent or buy?

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