Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government is not pretending that any one initiative will solve the housing problem. It will be a combination of a whole series of things. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, announced three new initiatives in the past week: an affordable rental scheme; an affordable housing scheme; and a Rebuilding Ireland home loan mortgage system. All of these will help large numbers of people in different parts of the country, including in Dublin, to get their foot on the housing ladder or to find affordable rent.

We all know that the core pressures in housing are linked to a shortage of supply of social housing, affordable housing, affordable private housing and the private housing market generally. All of the supply indicators are moving in the right direction but there is significant pressure as there is population growth, leading to 50,000 extra people in Ireland each year, and this is happening in the areas where there is most housing pressure. We are conscious of that and we need to continue to launch new initiatives that help certain segments in different elements of the market. It will be more difficult to have an affordable housing scheme in Dún Laoghaire because land is much more expensive and is more difficult to get. In this regard, there is more of an onus on the local authority to provide social and affordable housing on publicly owned sites, which is what we are pushing it to do.

The Deputy should not dismiss good initiatives that are already attracting significant interest from potential home buyers, who are asking questions about a very attractive new proposition whereby they can borrow for the next 25 years at interest rates at somewhere between 2% and 2.5% on an income that would not have allowed them to get a mortgage previously.

This is a good initiative and should be welcomed. It is not the panacea to all of our problems. Increased supply is the core issue that the Government is trying to respond on, and multiple actions are taking place so that we can deliver on that. Let us not try to fit a scheme that has been launched this week into a demand that needs a different type of solution, but let us also not pretend these schemes are not going to provide good and sustainable solutions for many people who do not have them today. That is what the Government needs to do. This is a complex challenge, which goes from homelessness and dealing with the most vulnerable people to helping those who can afford and who want to buy homes to access affordable mortgages in the right way.

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