Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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The next slot is myself. I thank the three Ministers for being present. I am enthused to hear so much discussion on cost rental. This is something we have wanted to promote for years. I recall talking about cost rental for many years in council chambers and seeing blank faces looking back at me asking what was cost rental. I still think we need to do far more on publicising and explaining what cost rental is. We are all aware that it has been a massive success where it has come in. I know that from my own experience in Wicklow where LDA cost-rental homes opened recently.

I wish to ask the Minister about costs in construction. We engage with the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, SCSI, which does some excellent work and excellent research. It produced a report in mid-2020. Those figures are somewhat dated now because we have the war in Ukraine and we have had inflation and many issues. It set out in the report how the breakdown in the costs of housing is split - approximately 48% hard costs such as materials and 52% soft costs, which includes levies, cost of finance, marketing and land. When we take measures such as those announced today to take away development contribution charges from developers, what type of research do we undertake to come up with that kind of decision to say, “This will result in this outcome”, as in a cost saving. We want to make housing affordable. We will produce the numbers but affordability is always going to be the big challenge.