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

This is my third go at this. The Minister has an impressive ability to reel off statistics indicating the effectiveness of his programmes but to resolutely refuse to address the problems I am raising about particular sites and about affordability generally. I will repeat this for the third time. In whole swathes of Dublin and other areas, the Minister's affordable schemes will not work because he has not ensured that private developers set an affordable price that is actually affordable, or committed them to any percentage, having abandoned a 40% percentage. I would like the Minister to tell me what is the percentage on Cherrywood or any other site where the prices are currently way in excess of prices on any of the Minister's schemes. In addition, for the affordable schemes on public land, will the Minister guarantee they will stay affordable into the future or will "affordable" become a stalking horse for privatisation of public land? The only way that will not happen is if the Minister ensures that affordable houses on public land have to be sold back to the local authority and cannot be sold onto the market in the future. Will the Minister make that commitment?

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