Ms Eilish Comerford:

Deputy O'Brien asked whether the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government had responded to us. We met him a few weeks ago and put our case to him. He told us that he would get in touch and probably visit the site to have a conversation with us, but nothing has happened. In fairness, we need to follow that up ourselves with a request.

The frustrating thing is that we have been waiting 20 years for the vacant site in Inchicore to be developed. The cost rental model is attractive for us because some people on the waiting list have been there for 11 years and are getting nowhere. They find it difficult to get private accommodation. The monthly rent for private accommodation in Inchicore is €1,600. People have to move out of their area. There are also people who are just above the income threshold, so they do not qualify for social housing, but they want to live in the Inchicore area in Dublin 8 near the city centre. A new state-of-the-art children's hospital is being developed on James's Street, which is ten minutes away on the Luas. If we do not have affordable accommodation, we will probably not attract people to work in the hospital. The idea of the model's cross-subsidisation is to make housing affordable so that most of someone's income is not spent on accommodation, leaving him or her little else to spend on anything else.

The schemes under Dublin City Council's housing land initiative could result in private development. Many people cannot afford to take our mortgages. They do not even qualify for mortgages. Prices are so high in Dublin that people cannot even afford to buy under the affordable housing scheme. That results in people being in situations where, if they get sick or lose their jobs, they may lose their homes. We must consider other solutions.

We need leadership in government. In the past 20 years, a new Inchicore primary care centre and a sports complex have been built and Richmond Barracks was redeveloped, but only 175 homes have been built. Something is wrong in the housing sector if we cannot get this right. We are asking the Government to show leadership. We welcome the cross-party support for this campaign. We urge committee members to table a motion on ring-fencing funding for this project and to do whatever it takes to implement this model at St. Michael's estate.

Regarding Deputy Coppinger's point, we support public housing and it should continue to be resourced alongside this model. We would be happy to meet the Deputy at any time she likes.