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

The Minister needs to get real here. One has to be earning €75,000 to borrow €300,000, and houses cannot be bought in huge swathes of Dublin, as I have just pointed out, for that price. What about the vast majority of people who do not have €75,000 and who, in any event, even if they did have it, almost certainly could not find a house in Dublin for that price? The scheme does not offer them anything at all, except the illusion or fantasy that the bank of mum and dad will sort it out. The Tánaiste said that there is a particular onus on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to build on public land. There is a particular onus on the Tánaiste to explain why the Government sold off the Cherrywood site to an American property speculator, ensuring that the prices in what will be a new town with the potential to solve the housing crisis in the whole of south Dublin will now be totally unaffordable. He should also explain why the previous commitment that the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, would deliver 40% affordable housing on developments such as Cherrywood has now been abandoned. Will the Tánaiste reinstate that commitment? Will he define what affordability is? Tell me what is affordable and who can afford it.

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