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

The central point is that the problem we have is house prices are, in general, way beyond the affordability of the vast majority of working people. The fact that some people load themselves up with debt and take on mortgages that need an excessive proportion of their income to pay for accommodation does not mean that the system is good or working; it just means that people are desperate and overextend themselves. The truth is that people should not pay more than 25% to 30% of their incomes on accommodation costs. House prices, particularly in Dublin and some other large urban centres, are way in excess of that cost. People on average incomes are paying a much higher proportion of their incomes to try to pay for a home.

All resources and initiatives of the Government should be put into making houses affordable. The Minister said that the initiative is not causing major inflation in the market, which is debatable, but even he is correct, it is doing nothing to bring house prices down to genuinely affordable levels. All the resources available to him and the Government should be used to do that. What we are actually doing is underpinning a massively inflated, unaffordable market. The Minister might argue that the Government policies are not driving up prices, but they are certainly doing nothing to drive them down. That is the problem.

I will not get into the argument about the Oscar Traynor Road development in a major way but suffice it to say it is an absolute scandal that public land would be used in any shape or form to provide housing at current market levels rather than provide it on a not-for-profit level that is actually affordable or for social housing.