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

I understand why the Tánaiste is so sensitive on this issue because Rebuilding Ireland was his plan. He signed off on a document which contained not a single target over its six years for a single purchase for a rental affordable unit. As everybody knows, phone calls will not solve the affordable housing crisis. Affordable homes will.

I will ask the question again. How many affordable homes will be delivered this year funded through central government schemes? We know the answer, which is why he would not give it. It is zero.

The real issue is that all the measures, which the Tánaiste and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government continually repeat, will not deliver homes at genuinely affordable prices, namely, between €170,000 and €225,000. That is real affordability. Will the Tánaiste not finally accept that the measures which the Government is funding, at great cost to the taxpayer, are not delivering affordable homes? Will he agree the time has come to fund local authorities in an ambitious programme to deliver genuinely affordable rental and purchase homes on public land?

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