Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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This group of amendments speaks to one of the most fundamental differences of opinion between all of the Opposition and the Government. It is about what the best delivery or development model is for housing on the lands that the LDA will be delivering. The problem with this set of sections of the Bill is that it promotes joint ventures, land initiatives, collaborations with investment vehicles and a variety of commercial contracts, with the consequence that it will dramatically increase the development costs, not just for any portion of houses on a development that are sold at unaffordable, open market prices, but even for the delivery of affordable homes. To take an example, Shanganagh Castle is a development that most of us broadly support the principle of because it is 100% public housing. The difficulty is that the Land Development Agency currently cannot say what the price of the affordable purchase homes will be, because the development and financing model that it will use, which is fundamentally different from the Ó Cualann model which most members of this committee actively support, means that the all-in development costs are higher. It could be as high as we saw at the O'Devaney Gardens site where so-called affordable homes accessing the serviced sites fund will be sold for as much as €310,000, plus a shared equity portion of another €50,000, so an all-in cost of €360,000. That is the consequence of developing through joint ventures and land initiatives, which the sections I am trying to amend here facilitate.

The Minister rightly mentioned the Donabate development. A problem with that initiative is that 60% of the homes will not be available to between 80% and 90% of the population, going by the income distribution figures of the Central Statistics Office, CSO, because according to Fingal County Council, they would sell at prices of between €350,000 and €450,000. Instead of providing housing for the 80% or 90% of the population currently locked out of the market, we will see, through a joint venture land initiative, 60% of the homes made available to only 15% or 20% of the population, people who already have new homes to purchase because that is all that the market is delivering at the moment. The Minister knows that I am not in favour of a centralised State agency. Other Opposition parties have argued for centralised State agencies, although different from the Land Development Agency. If one is to have one, it makes no sense to use a variety of private sector delivery models that push up prices either for so-called affordable housing or for unaffordable open market homes. Every single home on public land should be available to the largest number of people, 80% or 90% of the population. The Government has no business setting up an agency that will allow scarce public land to be used to build homes that will be sold at prices of €400,000 or more. That is not just bad housing but is reckless in the extreme and is one of the reasons we have a housing crisis in the first place. That is why amendments Nos. 39, 88, 89, 90 and 93 seek to exclude those speculative private sector delivery mechanisms. That would clear the way for using delivery mechanisms that guarantee the maximum number of affordable homes at prices that working people can actually afford.