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

The Taoiseach said that one of the key priorities for his Department was to make work pay. I put it to him that he is failing dramatically in that regard. For large numbers of people, getting a pay increase means they lose their medical card and are pushed off the council housing waiting list and into an income bracket where they have no chance of being able to afford to put a roof over their heads. People on council housing waiting lists do not have much chance of getting a council house but they may get one after 15 years. When people who are working, as the Taoiseach wants them to do, receive a pay increase that brings their income over the threshold to qualify for council housing, they lose any chance of ever putting a roof over their head.

I attended a meeting of the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government yesterday at which representatives of the National Development Finance Agency and the Housing Agency effectively acknowledged there is no national affordable housing scheme. There is a series of sites on which they are desperately trying to provide affordable housing because the market is completely incapable of delivering affordable homes, particularly in Dublin. Even on sites where these agencies have been charged with coming up with affordable rental or affordable purchase schemes, they cannot do so, essentially because Government subsidies are not large enough. That is what emerged at yesterday's meeting. There was no consistency in terms of the affordable scheme. In one incredible example, the National Development finance Agency and the Housing Agency said one of the reasons they could not deliver affordable housing on a site in Ticknock was the prevalence of Japanese knotweed, which was driving up the costs of developing the site. This means site specific issues are derailing the capacity of the State to deliver a national affordable housing scheme that will ensure that work pays. In fact, work is doing the opposite. It is pushing people into an income bracket where they have no chance of ever being able to own or rent a house. Does the Taoiseach accept there is problem that he has not dealt with? What does he intend to do about it?

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