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

I want to respond to the claims of both Ministers that the actions they have been taking are tackling the crisis. We are told the fast-track planning process could deliver up to 10,000 homes. There is no guarantee that a single one of those will be delivered at an affordable price and I suggest they will not. The Minister told us that the local infrastructure housing activation fund will assist affordability. It will not do so on the basis of the figures that we have been able to squeeze out of the Department for the contracts signed so far.

We have been told that the guidelines to reduce the size and quality of apartments and living space will reduce costs. According to I-RES, a unit will reduce by €70,000. Of course, the figure is a fraction of that based on the limited data we have from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland. The Government will make living more difficult for people in high-rise development with no increase in affordability.

Deputy Ó Laoghaire is right about the home loan scheme. That scheme is not a bad idea if there are affordable properties. However, to suggest that the majority of properties purchased in Dublin, Cork and Galway in the last year are less than €320,000 implies that is a benchmark for affordability when it is substantially above it.

With respect to the Part V increase being premature, I would have thought given the difficulties many developers have accessing finance, having an upfront commitment to purchase 20% of the units would actually be financially very attractive to many of them and certainly would assist in implementing Government policy.

It took three years to develop an affordable rental pilot from the plan of the then Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, in 2014 to 2016 and now the announcement last week. I do not understand how something so relatively straightforward could take so long.

To really understand why many of us believe the Government is not taking affordable housing seriously, I make one simple comparison. The Government is committing €25 million over two years for local authorities to deliver affordable housing. That is compared with the €1.1 billion it is investing in private sector-led schemes through the help-to-buy scheme, the local housing initiative and home building finance Ireland. The vast majority of the investment is in private sector-led schemes that the Minister and his advisers know cannot guarantee the level of affordability that people so desperately need. I urge the Government to redress that balance. The legislation providing for home building finance Ireland needs to prioritise small to medium-sized builders working in conjunction with local authorities and approved housing bodies to build genuinely affordable rental and purchase units on mixed-income and mixed-tenure estates with social housing. It can be done at prices from €170,000 to €250,000 or €260,000, substantially below anything the private sector will deliver in any of the Government's other schemes.

It was interesting that the Minister of State, Deputy Phelan, said he was happy to give us an update. Only one update matters for people desperate for affordable housing, which is how many units the Government has delivered and how many units it will deliver this year. The answer to both of those questions as the Minister of State knows, is zero. In seven years of this Government and the previous Government not a single affordable unit has been delivered through any central government scheme to rent or to buy and not a single unit of such accommodation will be delivered this year. Left to its own devices, the Government will not tackle that problem. We need a major mobilisation of public anger and public demonstration directed towards the Government's failure. On 7 April here in Dublin people from the length and breadth of the country will have the opportunity to express their disappointment in the Government's failure and to demand that it start to invest in genuinely affordable housing for the families who so desperately need it.

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