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

Of the many pressing infrastructure needs the country has, the most pressing is being able to put an affordable roof over the heads of our citizens. This is vital from a social and economic point of view. Given that in the budget the Taoiseach committed, between the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, and Home Building Finance Ireland, approximately €1 billion in supports for private developers to deliver housing, what, if anything, is the Government doing to ensure that we are going to get an appropriate return in terms of affordable housing? It amounts to public investment being given to private developers.

When the LIHAF proposal was first introduced, for example, the Government announced that 40% of any development supported by LIHAF was going to be affordable. Within a month, that was gone. Now, there is no guaranteed percentage and no definition of affordability. All this money is going out but nothing is guaranteed. The same applies with Home Building Finance Ireland, the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and NAMA land. There are no guarantees that for anything built, in some cases in particularly large developments, any significant or guaranteed proportion will actually be affordable.

I wish to remind the Taoiseach that prior to the crash we were building 90,000 houses per year. They were unaffordable. That is part of the reason we had a crash. We can up the supply but if the prices being charged by private developers are unaffordable, it is not sustainable. What commitments are we getting on affordability?

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