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

If members are concerned about the section 183 element of the Bill, we can remove it on Committee Stage by way of amendment. I encourage all who have concerns to support amendments that Sinn Féin will table.

I have many questions on the LDA and its operation in the Bill, but we will leave them for the appropriate session. I am still trying to understand the interaction between the LDA and the Affordable Housing Bill. My central question is as follows. The original idea of the LDA was to deliver 150,000 new homes over 20 years. To do that, the capitalisation from the State was not sufficient, so the LDA was to leverage the value of the land to attract private investors through joint ventures to develop sites. The reason the original Fine Gael LDA had 60% open market sale prices was to attract a level of investment to deliver those 7,500 homes every single year.

If Mr. Coleman is now saying it is not his intention to pursue joint ventures with private investors, even though the legislation clearly allows that, then the scale of ambition the LDA will have in terms of delivery of units will be dramatically scaled down. I am trying to get clarity on whether the LDA is still committed to that large volume of delivery which will be dependent on joint ventures. The €2.5 billion, between capitalisation and borrowing, will be depleted quickly between the equity stake the LDA will provide in the private homes and other outlays. Is the LDA just going to scale back the ambition? It is important for members to understand what the level is.

I am also concerned because the point Deputy Gould made was not really about people below the social housing threshold. It was about those people who are €1,000 to €5,000 above it. For those people, the LDA rents are not affordable in terms of a third of net take home pay, whether in Dún Laoghaire or Cork. How do we include those people in genuine affordability? Likewise, we still do not know what the price of the LDA's affordable purchases will be, so we do not know if they will be affordable or not. Can Mr. Coleman give us any clarity on that?