Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The lack of availability of affordable building land is a factor in this, as is the potential for land hoarding. Last week, we saw Dublin City Council's first vacant site register, with 25 potential sites for house building. Half of these were publicly owned sites. The obvious thing in a housing crisis is to make publicly owned land available at a low cost or no cost to provide affordable housing. Why does the Minister refuse to take this action? There are plenty of sites in public ownership, which the Minister could make available under an affordable housing scheme, where small builders or bigger builders could come along and build three-bed houses for the suggested cost of €160,000, which would then be made available to people on low and average incomes. Housing is completely unaffordable for anybody on any type of average income. Why does the Minister not introduce a new affordable housing scheme? He has the land to do it. Will he tell us why he refuses to act?

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