Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wonder if the Minister has heard the joke about the members of Fianna Fáil who claim that affordable housing is a core party value. Apparently, after a recent meeting of the party's internal housing committee, a committee member told a journalist that housing policy is to Fianna Fáil "what cycling is to the Greens and Palestine is to the far left". The party hopes that the delivery of affordable housing will be seen as a key Fianna Fáil achievement in government. Fianna Fáil, we are to believe, is to be the purveyor of affordable housing. That might be the case in a land of unicorns, flying pigs, rainbows and bubbles. Back in reality, we all remember the Fianna Fáil-created property bubble. That bubble well and truly burst, leaving homeowners in huge negative equity, in defective buildings such as those in my constituency in Donegal affected by mica, in apartments buildings with inadequate fire safety and in unfinished housing estates.

I remember when, in 2002 or 2003, a Fianna Fáil Government raised the amount of the cost on which people could get mortgage assistance when buying a new property. That had the effect of raising the price of houses overnight. I recall, in particular, how a person I knew was selling a house in Mulhuddart in west Dublin that was worth approximately €270,000. Fianna Fáil in government increased the price of that house to €320,000 overnight by increasing the amount that people were able to pay for houses. The homeowner in question was advised by estate agents and others to up the asking price and, lo and behold, she got it.

The Government is doing the same thing again with the scheme we are discussing today. It will increase the price of houses for the benefit of nobody except property developers. People will be screwed by having to pay a higher asking price because they are desperate to get on the property ladder and own their own home. That is what the Government is setting out to do. The Minister said that the affordable purchase shared equity scheme for first-time buyers will account for only €75 million of the entire budget and that it means nothing in terms of overall housing provision. In fact, that €75 million will bump up house prices and cause problems for buyers. Even if nobody wants to use the scheme and nobody takes it up, it will bump up prices, which seems to be the Minister's intent.

I welcome the Sinn Féin motion on this aspect of the affordable housing Bill 2021. There is no doubt at all that we want affordable housing. There is also no doubt that the reality of affordability and the skewed ideas of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in this regard are miles apart. In a surprising turn of events, a number of Dublin City Council Fine Gael councillors have apparently written to the Minister urging him to scrap the shared equity scheme. These nine Fine Gael councillors, one of whom works with the Minister for Finance, have warned that this Fianna Fáil "demand-side measure" risks a "return to failed housing policies of the Celtic Tiger era". It is not just Opposition Deputies and Fine Gael councillors who are opposed to the Minister's shared equity scheme. That is a sentence I never thought I would have to say. The Central Bank has also expressed concerns that this ill-advised scheme could increase property prices and foist unaffordable debt on mortgage holders. There is more. The ESRI has said that the scheme will likely lead to price increases, mainly because of the significant dearth in supply.

Yesterday, the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage undertook a process of pre-legislative scrutiny of the affordable housing Bill. The committee is looking at all elements of the Bill, including the cost rental proposals, and heard yesterday from representatives of the Housing Alliance and others. Regarding the shared equity scheme, ESRI researchers said in their submission to the committee that the "constrained" state of our housing sector means that the scheme "will very likely lead to higher house prices". That is no surprise because it is what the Government wants to happen. It is okay as far as the Minister is concerned. "Constrained" is certainly a restrained way of describing our housing supply. I was looking on daft.iethe other day and there are zero properties to rent in my home town of Killybegs. In fact, there are just 40 properties listed for rent in the entire county of Donegal. While house prices are not off the scale like they are in Dublin or other urban centres, Donegal had the third highest average increase in house prices across the country.

Real Estate Alliance published information in September last year. Highland Radio reported that the alliance said houses are taking an average of three weeks less to sell across the country and that this is driven by a combination of low supply and highly motivated buyers, representing a shift in market behaviour that the sector has not experienced in the past decade. Donegal also has the lowest disposable income in the country, with high rates of forced ownership and other living costs that must be factored into the housing and rental market there.

I have recently asked a number of parliamentary questions about the current state of housing in Donegal. I was informed that the total number of households qualified for social housing support in Donegal in 2019 was 926. Yet, at the end of quarter 3, 2020 there were almost 1,900 people in housing assistance payment properties and an additional 510 in active rental accommodation scheme tenancies in the county. In a reply to one question I was informed that the 2020 social housing assessment report was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic but that work is ongoing and the summary report of the 2020 assessment will be published in due course.

The motion states that the origins of the scheme lie in two policy papers published by Irish Institutional Property and Property Industry Ireland in March and May 2020, respectively, and that the scheme was not included in Fianna Fáil's election manifesto or previously stated as Fianna Fáil policy. This makes me wonder who has the ear of the Minister and Department colleagues. Who is planting these ideas? A cynic would think those in Fianna Fáil want house prices to continue to rise. God forbid, we would not want that.

The scheme has been tried and tested in the UK and it resulted in higher house prices. The motion outlines numerous examples of this failure in England. For example, in 2020, a report published by the centre for economic performance at the London School of Economics found that in London the shared equity loan scheme led to a 6% increase in house prices. I am always amazed at how we seem to mimic and follow everything that happens in England. Then, years later, when they have already decided that the measure does not work we actually start implementing it here. Maybe we should cop on and actually look at the outcomes and, when things do not work, decide not to implement them.

In September 2020, officials in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform expressed concern that a shared equity loan scheme will push up prices. The then Secretary General of the Department, Robert Watt said: "The property industry want an equity scheme because it will increase prices."

The Government must row back and remove the affordable purchase shared equity scheme from the general scheme and final version of the Affordable Housing Bill 2020 before it comes before the Dáil. The €75 million allocated to the scheme should be redirected to the serviced sites fund for local authorities and approved housing bodies to facilitate the delivery of affordable homes to rent and buy.

The reality is it is not a matter of the €75 million bill expended on the scheme but the message it sends out that house prices will go up and push up. That is what is happening and that is what the Minister intends to do. That is obviously what those in government want to happen or what those in Fianna Fáil want to happen and they will make it happen. They should simply say that rather than keeping up the farce of doing it to reduce house prices.

I do not believe the electorate will allow Fianna Fáil to try and make a joke of them once again by lining developers' pockets under the guise of providing much-needed housing. What the Government needs to do is build and provide housing and forget about their friends, the developers. Let them look after themselves.

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