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

I confirm I am in Leinster House. I thank Mr. Curran, Mr. Dunne and their teams for their presentations. As somebody who has been a long-time advocate of local authority and approved housing body delivery of affordable rental and purchase accommodation, it is good that we are finally having these conversations. I must say, however, that I do not believe any lack of ambition is on the part of the people who are in this meeting. If central government does not provide significant funding from AHBs or councils to deliver affordable housing then we will not be able to deliver it. It is important that committee members know there was no additional funding for the serviced sites fund in budget 2021 above pre-existing commitments. Only €35 million was allocated to the AHBs for cost rental whereas we need to be spending far greater sums of money over the next five years to meet the level of need that exists.

I have two questions, the first of which is for CCMA. As we know, €300 million was allocated for the serviced sites fund over three years to deliver more than 6,000 affordable homes by the end of 2021. That obviously has not happened. As was said, we will only get 140 this year, 700 next year and 1,500 the year after, and those are pre-Covid figures. What needs to change to allow Mr. Curran to accelerate the drawdown and delivery of homes under that fund? If the fund were to be increased, what is Mr. Curran's capacity to handle that? We need thousands of these units every year, not hundreds.

I congratulate Mr. Dunne and his colleagues on the success of the applications, the details of which I know we will get soon when they are announced, for the affordable cost rental scheme. My concern here, however, is that it is a very small amount of money and a small number of units. The real concern is the rent levels, however. This is not a criticism of the Housing Alliance but a whole range of people will not be able to afford those rents, for example, single people or those on a modest dual income who are above the threshold for social housing. What needs to happen in that scheme to drive the rents down below €900, €800 or €700? Are we going to see any units in the city centre given the price differential there? We need to make sure these units get to the people who need them most. We are hearing figures of €1,100, €1,200 or €1,300 for rent on Land Development Agency, LDA, cost rental sites. What does the Housing Alliance need from Government to bring rents down below the €1,000 mark?