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

What we also need is for the Government to immediately introduce the affordable scheme it has been talking about. We are happy to work with it to ensure it has the right design. It needs to deliver homes, not at €320,000, but for families between €35,000 and €75,000 a year at genuinely affordable prices. That is somewhere between €170,000 and €280,000. Many local authorities still do not have enough staff and there needs to be additional resourcing for that. Crucially we need to reduce the length of time it takes to deliver social and affordable homes. The 18-month approval, tendering and procurement process is simply too long and must be reduced, not to the 12 months the Government is currently targeting but below that.

We also need to see the fast-tracking of the home building finance Ireland legislation. I know it is not the Minister's portfolio. It is under the Department of Finance. It is something the House agrees on and would work constructively with the Government on if it was laid before the House. We also need to be much more proactive with the credit unions. It is almost four months since the Central Bank made its decision to allow credit union finance into social housing. If that money was released it would free up Exchequer revenue to put into affordable housing and yet little action is being taken by either the Department of Finance or the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government on it. We need a coherent and proactive plan by the Minister's Department and the Department of Finance to get approved housing bodies back off balance sheet. My understanding is since redesignation has happened, there have been no meetings with the approved housing body sector to address these issues. We need to ensure that no LIHAF funding is given to any development that does not deliver some coherent level of affordability at affordable prices.

What real Opposition parties must do is in the run up to budget 2019 is say what they would do differently in government. They should say it not only in rhetoric but in concrete measures with proposed expenditure that is fully accounted for. That is what a real Opposition party does. It is not what is in this motion today. That is why Sinn Féin certainly will not be supporting it. We will be moving our own amendment to the motion.

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