Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This is the bit I do not understand. The case has not been made, and no rationale has been offered, as to the reason we would want to build homes at full market price on public land, or what the advantage is of doing that. We have a huge demand and crisis in terms of housing affordability. We need to be using public land to deliver affordable and social housing. That is abundantly clear, and the Minister has said that a great deal himself. There is gap between what he says in terms of his mantra of public homes on public land and what is actually being done and being delivered. I am highly sceptical of the Land Development Agency. We hear that mantra, yet what we see is majority, private, full market price homes being built on public land. That is what happened under the previous Government, and it is what is happening under this Government.

I want to make a point on delivery. It slows down delivery to do that mix because to be able to sell homes at full market price the homes have to be drip fed for sale over a number of years. If the houses were built at prices that people could genuinely afford, for which there would be huge demand, we would be able to build-out a lot of these housing schemes much quicker and thus we would have much quicker delivery of homes. We would have quicker delivery and more affordable homes. I have yet to hear any rationale as to the reason, in terms of public land, there should be any provision of unaffordable, full market price homes when there are already private developers who have plenty of land to be delivering that type of build. That is not where there is a gap. There is a particular gap in terms of affordability and also social housing.