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

The Minister's answer is truly remarkable. While I know that he has only been in office for six months, I am really beginning to question whether or not he understands the extent of this particular issue and the extent of the pressures that people are under. According to every indicator, rents and house prices are increasing quarter on quarter and year on year. We are talking about the housing needs of working families on incomes somewhere between €35,000 and €75,000 a year. As I keep telling the Minister, supply alone will not resolve the problem without guarantees of affordability. The difficulty is that the measures that the Minister has just outlined combine to a total of €1.1 billion over three years to assist private sector delivery, with no guarantee of affordability. The scheme that the Minister has been promising to announce for a number of weeks now pledges approximately €25 million as compared to €1.1 billion. I again ask the questions and if the Minister does not have the answers then I ask that he be honest and tell us that. What is the Minister's definition of affordable rental? What is his definition of affordable sale? What are his targets for the delivery of those two streams of affordable housing for 2018? When will he introduce the necessary legislation to give effect to the affordable housing scheme that he promised both in the programme for Government and in Rebuilding Ireland?

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