Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I support the proposal for a report on the cost of housing. Deputy McGrath referred specifically to the cost in the private sector but I think we need to know the cost of the State building housing too. I have tabled several parliamentary questions on this in recent years and the figures I get vary significantly. We need to compare the costs of public sector and private sector building to either further delineate the different types of housing that could be built and by whom they might be built.

We should examine the relative cost of housing units built by direct labour by the State as against public housing built by contractors brought in to deliver it. The Minister referred to profit-taking, marketing is another cost to which he referred, and there are other costs which add to the cost of building, which we would not have if housing units were built by direct labour. Obviously, the cost of land is an issue. Any study needs to examine that and also co-operative housing, of which there are various schemes in development. A good scheme has been proposed in my area where there is a plan to build four high specification, environmentally advanced houses, the projected cost of which is €360,000 for four houses.