Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Rebuilding Ireland has a target of 137,000 social housing units. Of those, it is intended to source 104,000 from the private sector through acquisition, lease, RAS and HAP. The cost of that will be extortionate. Indeed, I ask whether the Government has massively underbudgeted for HAP in 2019. The Minister says €423 million is the allocation for an additional 16,700 HAP tenancies in 2019. However, the allocation for only 43,000 HAP tenancies the previous year was €417 million. That means there will only be €6 million in additional funding yet there will be an extra 17,000 HAP tenancies. In fact, the number of HAP tenancies will probably exceed significantly what the Minister suggests to compensate for the fact that Government has failed to meet its construction targets. Current and capital expenditure going to the private sector at extortionate cost will probably reach, when one throws in NAMA and everything else, €2 billion. It is madness when we could build the houses for a fraction of the price on public land.

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