Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Ó Broin and thank him for bringing forward this motion. The housing crisis has gone on for far too long. There have been too many promises, too many broken homes, broken lives and broken families. As a councillor and now as a Deputy for Dublin West, I have come across hundreds of families who have been on social housing lists for more than 12 years. I am sure the Minister has as well. It is absolutely shocking and unfortunately it is not getting any better. I have come across hundreds of families and individuals who are stuck in the rent trap paying unaffordable rents and unable to escape because they cannot afford to save for a mortgage. Many hundreds of others have moved back into their parents' homes and have saved tens of thousands. However, they are saying to me that the more they save, the more the cost of housing becomes unaffordable and the more the prices are getting out of their reach. I had a look on daft.iethis week at current prices for sale and rent in Dublin West. An average three-bedroom house in Dublin 15 costs €1,800 per month to rent and an average new house costs €400,000.

The Minister might let me tell him about 25 ha of land in Dublin 15 called Churchfields. It was proposed that this would become a wonderful new community of over 1,100 houses and apartments, a new park and community youth facilities. That was way back in January 2018. To date, about 60 social housing units have been built. I commend Fingal County Council on the work it has put in to try to deliver this project. However, there is a serious problem with the substantial delivery because central government, including the previous Government, does not have a funding model. The land for the 1,100 units is there. The services are in place and the road infrastructure is about to be put in place in the next months. We need the Minister to do three things: provide funding to build social housing for people on the housing list, those on the transfer list and people in homelessness; provide funding to build cost rental accommodation that would cost between €700 and €900; and provide funding to provide genuinely affordable houses for €230,000 or less. We now have a chance to give people a real hope that things are going to change. I ask the Minister to guarantee that there will not be a single inch of that land sold to a private developer for profit.

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