Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Hold on, I did not interrupt. In Wexford this year, three local authority houses will be built. That is three, with a waiting list of 3,700. The Minister of State needs to give us a break. It is nonsense. The Government is still totally dependent on the private market to deliver. The Minister of State says that no one gets to build on State land without providing affordable housing. Anyone to whom NAMA has given land has not provided affordable housing. They are selling four bedroom houses in Dún Laoghaire for €700,000 each on land that NAMA provided and financed. NAMA did a deal on loans belonging to the developer Harcourt, known as Project Abbey.

It sold it, but it took the residential land out of it and boasted to us at the housing committee last year it they would ring-fence it for Government housing. What did it do with it? It went back to the same developer a couple of weeks ago and did a deal with him. There is no way there will be a unit in it for less than €400,000. They will be a lot more. We are not going in the right direction. There is no affordable housing policy at present and there was none in the budget. Will there be one? I would like to see it. There is no way NAMA should be allowed to fund the building out of State land, because every bit of land NAMA has is State land.

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