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

To correct the Minister, it is in the serviced sites scheme that when ones buys an affordable home, one does not own 100% of the home. If the serviced sites fund grant is about €50,000, the local authority owns about 12% to 15%. That is the scheme and that is what is in front of us. If the property is sold at a later time, that charge has to be repaid to the local authority. It is the Government scheme where one does not have full home ownership.

The Minister is not dealing with the crucial point of Deputy Boyd Barrett's amendment here, which is, why not make these homes permanently affordable? Why not make sure every future buyer gets an affordable home? The problem is at some point we will run out of land. If we do not start building up a stock of privately owned, tradable and permanently affordable homes, at some point there will be a generation of bank clerks, retail workers or healthcare workers and there will be no affordable homes for them to purchase. That is why the whole proposition is to build up a good stock of such homes.

I am happy on another occasion to explain the detail of Sinn Féin's affordable housing plan because it is clear the Minister still has not read the document. If one buys a home under our plan, one owns it 100%. However, we want those homes to be permanently affordable, not the €350,000 to €450,000 homes that the Minister promises to deliver in large tracts of public land across the State.