John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to look at this from a Dublin perspective as house prices here are considerably higher than in many other parts of the country. There is a substantial cohort of people who are squeezed out of the housing market and consigned to life in private rental accommodation.

The irony is that often the rent they pay is greater than a mortgage repayment. The Minister has clearly identified schemes that will come on and has given examples. The problem is that is a drop in the ocean compared with demand. My specific concern is that the big housing solutions that we see, the big planning applications that are going directly to An Bord Pleanála, are all build to rent. That seems to be where the future lies. Our concern is that there are people who are working whose incomes are higher than the entitlement threshold for social housing who are missing out and are not able to purchase their own houses.

Out of curiosity, I looked online before I came to the House and found that in Dublin today, of new houses for sale under €300,000, 12 are listed publicly. That is the scale of the problem and that is the group that we are trying to address.

See this speech in context