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

I would like Mr. Nicholson to answer briefly my first question regarding how many homes he expects to be completed this year under the serviced sites fund, which is obviously separate to the issue of cost-rental equity loans. There has also been some confusion regarding what is known as the help-to-buy premium, which is part of the British scheme, and the impact of shared equity schemes on inflation. Mr. Nicholson has outlined that the help-to-buy premium is the difference between two comparable properties, one of which was bought with a shared equity loan and one which was not. As Deputy Cian O'Callaghan rightly pointed out, that is not an aspect that we are concerned about; we are concerned with the overall impact of shared equity loans on house price inflation. Those are two fundamentally different things.

I have furnished the committee with a reference to a report by the London School of Economics because it is the most up-to-date empirical academic study on this topic. It concludes that the impact of shared equity loans on house price inflation in London, where demand is highest, is 6%. Across England and Wales overall, the rate of inflation is between 3% and 5%. While the study found that while the shared equity loan scheme in Britain increased supply, it also explicitly states that the resulting increased supply was provided in the wrong areas. In many cases, it was on the Welsh-English border and not in the major urban centres, where affordability was most difficult. The report went on to say that hard-pressed working families, which it calls "cash-constrained households", did not benefit from the scheme, and "Only developers or landowners, not new buyers, benefited from the policy". I appreciate that Deputies and Senators supporting the Government must defend its policy in this committee. I understand that, but all I ask them to do is to read this report, because it shows that in areas of high demand house, price inflation is driven up and those people we all want to help do not benefit.

I will make one small correction to what Deputy McAuliffe said. Of the three schemes we are dealing with today, the shared equity loan scheme is the largest, at €75 million of public expenditure this year. The serviced sites fund will have €50 million in expenditure this year and cost rental is €35 million. The shared equity loan scheme, therefore, accounts for almost half the affordable housing expenditure in this year.

He is right that we should look at all three but shared equity is much bigger than the other two on their own. That being the case, perhaps Mr. Nicholson can give me a direct answer on how many serviced sites fund homes will be delivered this year.