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

I broadly echo the points made by Deputy O'Doherty. One further thing is that it is not just about supply. That is a point I have made repeatedly over recent years. I remind the committee, because this is a very important point, that even when we had record levels of supply in this country, when we were delivering 70,000 to 90,000 houses a year, they were unaffordable. They landed the country and the people in it in absolutely enormous debt. Even if one were to expand supply on a massive scale, therefore, our recent experience tells us that does not deliver affordability and in fact it can deliver the opposite. That is how distorted the market is, and that is because the market is operating on the principle of profit. We know, because the builders tell us, that they cannot deliver housing at anything remotely approximating affordability. They just cannot do it. That is the problem we have, and we intend to compound it by giving them public land on which to build more unaffordable housing. That really beggars belief and the Government will say, "We are getting 50% and, by the way, the Land Development Agency says 10% is the minimum". We may get more sometimes and we will get an undefined affordable proportion but then we will also have market-priced housing on public land that will contribute to an already unaffordable housing sector by any meaningful definition.

I pose the same question to the Minister as Deputy Doherty did, but slightly more sharply. Is it not fair to say that 25 to 30% of average income is as much as anyone should spend on mortgage or rent?

Is that a reasonable definition of affordability? If so, then we need to deliver housing at scale at that level, that is, housing that will only cost about 25% to 30% of average incomes in mortgage repayments or rent. Anything more than that is excessive, will overstretch people and is of no use in solving the current crisis. It simply serves to sustain private developers in business. They are not capable of delivering affordable housing, even if they wanted to, because of their costs and their need to make a profit. They just cannot do it so why on earth would the Government do anything to underpin or sustain what is a completely unaffordable and out-of-kilter housing sector? All resources, all land available to the State and all policy measures should be directed at delivering housing that is affordable, that is, social housing for those who could never hope to buy and affordable housing at prices that are affordable for ordinary working people.