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

I wish to ask about the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF. Cherrywood in my constituency will be a virtual new town of 8,000 residences. A total of €15 million will be given to Hines, the private developers that got most of the site at a very substantial discount from NAMA and which stands to make a hell of a lot of money. Average house prices in Dún Laoghaire are about half a million euro if not €600,000. The developers will make an awful lot of money. They got a discount from NAMA to get the land; they are getting a discount on the development levies and they are getting €15 million from the infrastructure fund for the public to effectively build the infrastructure to make the site ready for development. Out of that we are only getting 10% back in social housing. Will the Government please ask for more than 10%, given the huge State subsidy that is effectively being given to the private property developers who have the site? If we got a reasonable percentage of that land - well above 10%, which was originally NAMA land and should never have been sold - we could solve the housing crisis in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. Will the Government put conditions on that money to demand that we get considerably more than 10% back in social housing in Cherrywood and other similar developments?

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