Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will zone in on the issue of affordable housing. For genuinely affordable housing, one would not want to be paying over €200,000. If we take the Central Bank's guidance that a mortgage should be no more than three and a half times the household income, for a household with an income of €60,000, the top rate it could pay for a house is €210,000 if we are talking in terms of an affordable price, but the Minister does not seem to be talking in those terms. He is quoted in an article in The Irish Timesas having said that when we talk about house prices, we talk about €320,000 generally in the greater Dublin area, Cork and Galway and €250,000 in other parts of the country.

The idea that a home for sale at €320,000 is affordable is incredible; it is a joke. Ordinary workers on ordinary wages are locked out of the housing market with that kind of price. How can the Minister stand over that as an affordable price?

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