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

I will briefly respond to some of the key arguments of the Government members of the committee. It is not the case to say the Government is not supportive of facilitating private developers to make profit. If one looks at the housing policies around social housing, in particular, over the last five to ten years, it has all been about trying to attract high cost, private finance through the provision of profit because the State did not want to directly deliver large volumes of social and affordable homes. It is why we are in the housing crisis.

Government policies, whether it is the enhanced leasing scheme, local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, excessive tax breaks for real estate investment vehicles or the shared equity loan scheme proposed by Fine Gael and either supported or facilitated through the abstention of Fianna Fáil, say to private developers the Government will give them profit in exchange for development. There is a cost to it and people need to be clear, which is why I raise it.

The cost is that it reduces the volume of affordable houses delivered and increases the cost. I take Kilcarbery, in my constituency, as an example. For a decade, we campaigned for Government to invest with South Dublin County Council to deliver 1,000 homes on the site. Some 300 would have been social rental, approximately 300 would have been affordable rental and approximately 300 would have been affordable purchase. It would have given the social mix Senator Cummins proposed, but Fine Gael would not fund it and instead the council was forced, if it wanted to develop the land, to sell it.

The consequence is we will have 30% social housing, which I welcome, but 70% of the homes on the site will be open market unaffordable. If one takes O'Devaney Gardens as an example - none of the Deputies or Senators on the Government side addressed this point - the consequence of bringing in a private developer with the serviced sites fund is those homes are €60,000 more expensive than if one restricted it to the approved housing body, local government or community housing trust sector.

With respect to the off balance sheet - Senator Cummins knows this - Ó Cualann is the largest supplier of affordable homes with the serviced sites fund and they are off balance sheet. One can have off balance sheet vehicles with this financing and, therefore, it is not an issue. It is not the case this amendment would prevent ethical investors. In fact, last week Clúid Housing announced a deal with an ethical investor, a long-term, low-yield pension fund, for the delivery of more than 500 homes, so, again, it is absolutely not the case. With respect to Deputy Duffy, the Land Development Agency, LDA, cannot access the serviced sites fund, so it does not apply this sense.

The central issue is whether or not we want to continue with the failed Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael housing policy of privilege and private developers using public money to cross-subsidise very significant profit while driving up the price of homes.

Senator Seery Kearney is wrong. Supply, in and of itself, will not fix the problem. The supply must be affordable which the Senator's Government has failed to take into account for the last number of years, so we either use the funding-----