Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is important to remember that the origin of these schemes does not come from the councils but from a time when there was no central government funding available for any kind of scheme, whether mono-tenure or mixed. The difficulty with the funding model the Government is essentially imposing on the local authorities is, first, it does not allow the right quantity of social, affordable rental and affordable sale housing, and there is no guarantee that the affordable rental or affordable sale housing will actually be affordable. There is a real need to undertake a pilot project - we think St. Michael's is a good example - to show that a fully State-funded, council-led, mixed-tenure estate with social, affordable rental and purchase housing, at genuinely affordable prices, would not only deliver a better mix and meet the housing needs of the local community, but would deliver better value for money and greater levels of affordability. In fact, if the Minister of State asked Dublin City councillors whether they would prefer a State-funded, council-led scheme on this site or the model that has been imposed on them, they would opt for the first of those. That is why I am asking the Minister of State to consider this as a pilot and to compare this with his preferred option for O'Devaney Gardens and Oscar Traynor Road. He will find the arguments we are making on St. Michael's stack up.

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