Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the question. If there was a difficulty in the response Deputy Boyd Barrett heard, that was because of a difficulty in the question. It flies in the face of reality. This crisis is 15 years in the making. This Government has put together a €6 billion war chest to fix our housing sector under Rebuilding Ireland and to fix it in a way so that we do not make the mistakes made in the past.

Motions passed by councils do not build houses. Local authorities seeking funding from this Department, using their landbanks and engaging with builders is what builds houses, and that is what is happening throughout the country. Deputy Boyd Barrett does not want to see that but that is what is happening. There were 2,200 or 2,400 social housing homes built last year. That was a threefold increase on the previous year. We will build 3,800 this year between local authorities and housing bodies and roughly another 500 to 600 from the Part V commitments. That is a doubling of social housing homes being built on local authority land again this year.

I provided an additional €50 million for local authorities to bring forward their landbanks for affordable homes. We know we need affordable homes because we have acute affordability pressures, particularly in those ten local authorities that we know of in Dublin and the greater Dublin area, Cork city and Galway city. That will work with designated income criteria for accessing the affordable purchase scheme. We will also provide, roughly, depending on the site, €30,000 to €40,000 per home as a discount. The local authority will decide what the land value is, that will be a further discount that will come off the price of the house and that will make it affordable.

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