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

I confirm to the Chairman that I am in Leinster House. Due to the limited time I will go straight into questions. I have three questions, one for each of our guests.

With respect to Dr. O'Toole's concerns that the shared equity loan for private purchases would push up house prices, I presume it is his view that the bigger that fund the greater the risk of inflation. We know, for example, that the Government is currently in negotiations with the banks to increase the fund from €75 million to €150 million, with €75 million of banking funding. Is there a concern that the more funds that are available the greater the risk of house price inflation? On Dr. O'Toole's concerns around targeting, I presume that, given the Government is talking about combining the shared equity loan with help-to-buy, there are no income limits on access and the upper limit for house price purchases in Dublin is about €400,000, this would further exacerbate his concerns that there is an inadequate level of targeting.

I have a specific question for Mr. O'Connor on the shared equity loan and the interest that will be charged. The Government has said, obviously, that it wants an entry-level interest rate from year six at 1.5% and then increasing. We hear from some media reports that the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland would like a higher entry-level interest rate. Is there a level of risk to the buyer that if the interest rate calculation is too onerous, the buyer could end up with a far greater level of debt, as was the case with the last shared ownership scheme? The Housing Agency did for a report on this for then Minister of State, Jan O'Sullivan. Will Mr. O'Connor elaborate on that potential risk to the buyer from the interest rate?

My last question is for Dr. Larry O’Connell. Deputy McAuliffe is absolutely right that there are three parts to this Bill and many of us, like the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, have long advocated for cost rental and for affordable, local authority-led delivery. Given that we are only going to get 530 such units this year, confirmed to us by the Department officials last week, 700 such units are only guaranteed for the pipeline next year, and then 1,500, is that at the scale the NESC has consistently recommended and, if not, what is the level of scale?

Are we talking about thousands or tens of thousands of such directly delivered units rather than the hundreds the Government has made provision for over the next three years?