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

That is one of the areas where there are outliers. I will share with the Deputy the figures the Department has given us.

To respond to the Minister, I have always accepted that the State is spending more than it was spending before. My criticism is that it is not spending enough to meet the need that is there. The Minister tells us, for example, that 120,000 social homes will be delivered over the next ten years.

It will be slightly less than that because the Minister and I have different definitions of real social housing. If I did, however, accept that definition of 120,000, I note we have 130,000 households in need of social housing now and more are going to come onto the list every year. Even on the basis of the Minister's figures, therefore, he is coming nowhere near meeting need.

On affordability, there are times when the Minister says things that make me concerned that his understanding is different from the rest of us. Affordable housing should not be subsidised. The whole point of affordable housing is providing homes to buy or rent where people pay the economic cost of the delivery and innovative ways are found of cutting out additional cost without having to subsidise. Cost-rental is not subsidised. If the Ó Cualann Cohousing Alliance houses could never be sold into the housing sector, they would not be subsidised. That is an important point.

I am sorry the Minister found my intervention condescending. I do not have some magical powers to see into his head, it is that his office briefed the media after the Cabinet met on Tuesday. That briefing explained the reasons the Minister would not support this Bill and I am just relying on his own media presentation of that.

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