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

I will bring this to a conclusion. The answer is useful in the sense that this is where the disagreement is similar to my previous amendment about land assembly. It is not that any of these things are prohibited but that they are not happening. Actually, it seems that introducing affordable housing zoning is prohibited because there is no legislative basis for it and certain councillors who voted by a majority to introduce an affordable housing zoning were then told they needed to remove it because there is no legislative basis for it. Therefore, affordable housing zonings are prohibited and my amendment is trying to change that. The problem is that we will not get to where we need to get to by saying there is nothing to stop us having more affordable housing and so forth.

The fact is we have a huge deficit in it. The Government has not reached its targets on affordable housing each year since it has been in office. Each year money allocated to affordable housing has remained unspent and had to be allocated elsewhere and in some years returned to the Exchequer. While there is nothing to prohibit it happening, it is not happening at the scale needed. We need measures like this to ensure it happens at the scale needed.