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

I have two supplementary questions. First, can the Minister clarify whether the regulations he has been speaking about will cover the cost-rental model, as well as affordable purchase? I have a genuine concern with the way he is structuring the financing of cost-rental projects. Because the model involves paying down the loans over 25 or 30 years, the starting rents are simply too high. Unless people's salaries increase substantially over the first five to ten years of their tenancies, they will not be able to benefit from what the Minister is calling a market price reduction. It would be much more sensible to extend the use of the capital advance leasing facility, CALF, to approved housing bodies as a soft loan from the Government to supplement the European Investment Bank, EIB, loans. That would allow the loans to be paid down over a period of 40 or 50 years, which would allow starting rents that would have no relationship with the market but could be genuinely affordable for families with modest incomes according to the Minister's own criteria. I refer to starting rents somewhere between €700 and €800 per month, instead of what we are going to see; in Dún Laoghaire, 80% of market rates would mean rents of €1,500 or €1,600, which is not affordable. There is a facility there already, namely, CALF. It just needs to be extended to the cost-rental model. I would strongly welcome annual local authority targets for all the schemes. Can the Minister give an indication of when he intends to publish those?

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