Joe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minster with responsibility for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is very focused on delivering affordable housing schemes in key urban areas. As the Minster of State shares a constituency with me, he will be very aware of the need for a similar scheme in six or seven counties, namely, a sustainable house-building programme. County Longford will obviously be one of those. The average price for a standard three-bedroom, semi-detached starter home should be €229,000 whereas the average price of a house sold locally is only €122,000. The reason is that it is not commercially viable for builders to build houses in these counties at the moment. In County Longford it has been almost 12 years since we last had a three-bedroom, semi-detached house built commercially. In the intervening 12 years, the local authority estimates it has turned down more than 500 applicants for social housing on the basis that their income has exceeded the threshold. That means they earn too much to qualify for social housing supports yet they will be unable, in all likelihood, to secure mortgages. I am working with countless couples in such a bind. They are working hard, trying to save for a deposit for a house that will not, in all likelihood, materialise because the supply simply is not there.

Just 140 houses were built in County Longford last year and more than half of those were for social housing. I appreciate that we got things wrong in the noughties when nearly 4,000 houses were built in the county in the four years to 2007. Post-2008, a first-rate team from Longford County Council's engineering department rehabilitated many of these ghost estates and today the local authority housing stock is supplemented by an additional 1,000 houses through leasing and rental support schemes. The housing sector in County Longford and other socioeconomically similar areas needs a cautious and measured intervention. I earnestly hope the Department can roll out such a sustainable house-building programme. Ideally, I envisage the State, through the local authority, providing up to €60,000 of the €229,000 cost of a starter home, which I mentioned, and the applicants could in turn raise their mortgage through the Rebuilding Ireland scheme. This is the type of measured, assured and cautious intervention that will ultimately reinvigorate provincial Ireland.

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