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

On Monday next, Dublin City Council will revisit the issue of O'Devaney Gardens, a development where the Government is backing plans to hand over the entire site of 14 acres to a private developer in return for 192 social housing units, with the rest of it given over to the private developer to profit from.

In advance of that meeting, the Minister needs to tell us how much this is costing the public. He mentioned a figure of €100 million. If we divide 192 social housing units into €100 million it means that each of those social housing units will cost €520,000. If, as the architect Mel Reynolds suggested to me in a paper this week, that does not include the site value lost from handing over those sites to the private developer, Bartra Capital Property Group, the actual cost for what would be fewer social housing units than proposed in the original O'Devaney Gardens plans will be between €583,000 and €683,000 per unit. That is when the State could build on its own land for €220,000 per unit or refurbish the original units for approximately €100,000. If that is true, it is a shocking handover of money, land and assets to a private developer and we will pay extortionate prices for fewer social housing than were in the original O'Devaney Gardens plans. Can the Minister tell us if this is true?

See this speech in context