Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think we all agree that the affordability gap can only be bridged by means of State-led intervention. It is not going to happen if we leave it to the market. It is not going to happen if we only do it in respect of social housing and hope that might have a knock-on effect. When we look at what is actually coming on line through things like the serviced sites fund or the cost rental scheme, Dublin City Council has already identified two sites where there will be homes for less than €200,000. That is affordable. There is now €129 million for Dublin City Council under the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme for 2018 and 2019 to give out that affordable mortgage product.

If we look at two people earning the average industrial wage, let us say it is approximately €40,000, they have a combined income of €80,000. With the Central Bank rules, with help-to-buy, they can get the money together for a home at €310,000. The rent on a two-bed apartment on Enniskerry Road, which we are talking about being affordable, is €1,200 or €600 per person. Those amounts are affordable. However, there is a lot more work that we have to do regarding affordability. It is on both sides of the ledger still. We still have work to do on ensuring that all of those thousands of apartments that have planning permission are built. We still have work to do to make sure that the significant level of funding we have provided to date for affordable homes delivers such homes. It is also recognised that more than 12,000 households have been supported with help-to-buy and that more than 1,000 people have been able to buy homes using the Rebuilding Ireland home loan mortgage, which now has funding to support another 2,000 people up to the end of this year. A huge amount is being done by the Government. While we have to do more, we also have to recognise the complexity when it comes to individual sites such as Enniskerry Road, which require a number of partners and quite a bit of time to get things right. That is why we engaged the European Investment Bank officially in May as a research partner to ensure that, as we do this at scale, things like cost rental will be properly affordable over the lifetime of the building. As we bring affordable homes on-site across the country using the serviced sites fund, which is €310 million, almost half of which has already been allocated, we must ensure that we are seeing homes such as those Dublin City Council is talking about in terms of Ballymun and Ballyfermot and that we are bringing on homes at those prices.