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

There are a couple of other issues I wanted to raise. However, I would suggest that Mr. Coffey should look very closely at this issue from a fiscal point of view. Long before the housing crisis was publicly acknowledged, I warned Dr. John McHale that it was coming. He said he would look at it, but did not recognise it as a danger. A year later, everybody on this committee and the Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach recognised it as a danger. Here is something I think the IFAC should look at. Mr. Coffey should look at the reliance on private sector provision of social and affordable housing in the Government's housing plans under Rebuilding Ireland and the cost that will be incurred to the State. Out of a total of 130,000 proposed social housing units, between 60,000 and 70,000 are going to come from the private sector, through leasing arrangements or housing assistance payment, HAP, arrangements. The cost of that to the State is going to be vast. If we compare this cost with that of the direct provision of housing, we see that upfront capital costs would be bigger and long-term costs would be much less. We will have no control of that if the market continues according to current trends. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council should look at that as a serious fiscal risk.