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

I thank the witnesses for the presentations. A number of us on the committee today are looking to get into the detail of the projects from the Housing Agency perspective. I know the Enniskerry Road project is being developed now. Without straying into policy areas, we also want to try to get a handle on some of the financial modelling on which the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA, has been advising. I will start with a couple of technical questions.

The key to this is how we make the purchase or rental units genuinely affordable and part of our difficulty arises because there is not a clear definition of what we mean by "affordable" that is agreed by all actors. We should relatively soon have the affordable housing schemes for purchase agreed by local authorities. That has not yet happened and we have no scheme yet for the affordable or cost rental initiatives to know how affordability is defined. It is a bit of a movable feast.

One of my concerns about the Enniskerry Road project is that entry-level rents are not affordable for a large cohort of people at whom this kind of housing is targeted. Affordable cost rental is aimed at people who are above the thresholds of eligibility for social housing but are priced out of the market. The €1,200 figure is a high rent. It might seem to be not as high as the very excessive rents but it is very high and any household earning €45,000 or €55,000 would be paying well above a third of its net disposable income if that is the rent being charged. There is a problem in that.

I am not asking witnesses to argue for or against this but I would like to understand how the figure is derived from the financial modelling. Loans must be paid but as the witness indicated, in other European countries they are paid over 40 years or longer. I assume that here the loan would be paid over a shorter period, which is one of the reasons the entry-level rent is set so high. Are other costs mixed into this? Has Dún Laoghhaire-Rathdown County Council added costs for works already completed on the site, for example? Is the cost just derived from loan financing and management or maintenance? Do other costs push up the entry-level rents?

I ask a purely hypothetical question of the NDFA that does not stray into policy. If, for example, we looked at a model with entry-level rents from €700 to €900, which would relate to the Housing Agency's definition for the cohort of people with household income of between €45,000 to €65,000, how would it be modelled? Would it just be a longer loan term or would EIB loans be mixed with soft loans from the State, for example? Would it be looking at an upfront capital contribution from the State? What are the options? I am not looking for the witnesses to state a preference but we would like a read on the matter.

There is a serviced sites fund available for the Housing Agency so will that fund be accessed for the Enniskerry Road project to try to bring down its cost? If a type of loan like a capital bank loan facility were available to approved housing bodies, as there is with social housing, it could deal with the loan period issue.

Have these options been discussed with the Department and has any progress been made?

Will the delegates, please, explain how the equity stake will work in the case of the affordable purchase scheme and serviced sites fund. Is it set at €40,000 or €50,000? Will it be index linked with inflation or other factors? I would like to know because there is a lack of clarity on the matter elsewhere.

Will the delegates, please, explain the densities proposed by the Housing Agency? I am broadly supportive of the proposition and the planning framework for the national development plan. In order that people in Dún Laoghaire or Dublin city will understand the sites involved, from and to what densities are we moving?

Why stipulate a period of 70 years? I like the covenant idea as it is the right way to go, but I do not understand why one would set a time limit. Given that it is a public asset, I would have thought the time limit would be indefinite or open to regular review. Will the delegates, please, explain the rationale behind setting a time limit?