Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to correct the record with respect to an earlier remark. I want to stress that we are in favour of affordable housing; we are not against it. The Minister will not be able to deliver that unless he does what the Keane report proposed in the 1970s, which is to take control of all building land and make sure that we set the prices because the last affordable housing scheme failed catastrophically. It did not deliver any affordable housing because prices in the market went through the roof. The question is how do we control the market. The answer is that we build more social housing. That would provide low cost housing and it would also keep a lid on the market as a whole. Will the Minister answer the question about how much will this cost? It is obvious from what he is saying and from his report that the amount of money that will be going out from the Exchequer will increase exponentially over the next five or six years. I put it to him that would be money going out the door when he should be putting the money into local authority housing, which we would then own and from which we would secure rent. In the long term it would be better in that we would have better quality housing and it would represent better value for money for the State.

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