Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start with Ms Hegarty. While I want to get to discuss the costs she spoke about, I want to correct a point. She stated that "Under Housing For All, no housing is planned in Dublin city for households earning over €36,000 and under €80,000 per annum." We are talking about affordable housing there. The latest Dublin City Council housing report shows that on top of 10,000 social homes that are in planning, construction or whatever already, there are almost 5,500 additional affordable homes. That is a combination of 1,800 affordable purchase, more than 2,600 cost rental and roughly 700 through Part V provision. Ms Hegarty might come back to that afterwards. I am not trying to bombard her here but I think it is a really important fact. A big objective of Housing for All is to deliver affordable housing in spite of the challenges with cost inflation. If we can come back to that before the report is read into the record, or even after the meeting, that would be important.

Inflation and its cost is a real struggle for us to get our heads around. We are constantly battling the idea of trying to deliver affordable homes and legislation to use State-owned lands and remove or reduce the land costs. Ms Hegarty's advice to us is that the taxes and levies are being kept to a minimum so there is not really room there. Then there are the inflationary elements that are captured. There is a myriad of indices but the CSO one is really stark. It shows steel inflation at 50% to 60% with timber and wood at 50% to 100%, yet Ms Hegarty concludes that it is not cost inflation that is causing the increases. Even considering the various indices, materials have to be a significant factor. Is there anything at all that can be done? Can anything be done to change the methods or processes of building or the materials? What percentage does risk and uncertainty add to the cost?