Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the start of his contribution the Minister said the policy of this Government represents a fundamental change but that is patently untrue. The social housing targets are exactly the same as they would have been were Fine Gael leading the Government. There is no extra funding in this year's budget for the serviced sites fund beyond what Fine Gael already committed. The Government has added a miserly amount of money for affordable cost-rental. It is going to continue with the former Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy's flawed and failed Land Development Agency proposal and use public land for unaffordable private housing. The help to buy scheme, which Fine Gael Deputies have lauded, has pushed up house prices and more than 40% of it went to households who did not need it as they had sufficient mortgage finance to buy their own home.

The shared equity loan scheme is the only housing policy Fianna Fáil has brought to the table of this Government. I heard a number of Members, including the Minister of State, say it is a tiny part of the overall mortgage market. However, it is in fact a very large part of the first-time buyers' mortgage market in areas where supply is constrained and prices are very high. In actuality, the Government is currently trying to double the size of that fund by involving the private banks directly in the shared equity loan, pushing it up to €150 million. What the Government is not telling people is what the interest rate will be. Will it be 1.5% from year six or 3%? What will it rise by over the lifetime of the loan? While the Minister is saying there is no obligation to pay down that shared equity loan over its lifetime, if the home buyer does not then the interest rate will rise. If he or she does not then their level of debt will increase, alongside the expanding shared equity itself, where house prices increase. Therefore, nobody availing of this product will know exactly what level of debt they are taking on at the outset. If that is not reckless, I do not know what is.

The Minister said we are wrong to criticise the scheme because he has not published the details. However, he has leaked so many details to the press that we have a fair idea. Conversely, if the Minister is telling us that the scheme is substantially different from what he has proposed already then I have a simple proposition for him, namely, that he withdraw it from the affordable housing Bill. Let us progress with cost-rental and local authority-led direct delivery of affordable housing through the serviced sites fund and then when he has finally negotiated the terms of the shared equity loan scheme with the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland and has published the details of the scheme he can bring forward a separate legislation and people can judge the scheme on its own merits.

What we know is that there will be no income threshold for eligibility. Thus, for example, households earning more than €100,000 would be able to avail of this scheme even though they will not need it. We also know there will be regional price caps but in Dublin it will be €400,000.

12 o’clock

The idea that that will somehow constrain house price inflation is bizarre in the extreme. Deputies are aware that the equity stake can potentially rise as house prices rise. Likewise, if there is a property crash, the taxpayer will take the hit. We know that the interest rates will rise, which will increase the liability on the buyer over time. Another thing the Minister is not telling people is that it is unlikely that the Central Bank will be in a position to make a decision on the scheme until November. That is another reason to remove the scheme from the affordable housing Bill and bring it before the House as a stand-alone proposition.

The Deputies on the Government side who have spoken on the motion are wrong to dismiss the very serious criticism from a range of sources. I am very surprised at Fine Gael and the Green Party. They seem to be at sixes and sevens. Some Green Party Deputies are supporting the scheme while others are criticising it; some Fine Gael councillors are criticising the scheme while others are supporting it. The reality is that neither of those parties likes this idea. Members are aware that the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, was not keen on including it in the budget. It was a political decision rather than one based on sound financial or housing policy considerations.

Listening to the contribution of Deputy Higgins made me laugh. She was the leader of the Fine Gael group on South Dublin County Council who not only opposed 8,000 new homes in the Clonburris strategic development zone, 3,000 of which were to be social and affordable homes, but appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanála and delayed it for more than a year. She should tell that to her constituents in Dublin Mid-West when she is explaining to them why there is a housing crisis. The Minister of State, Deputy Burke, who is present, does not seem to know the latest developments in respect of the proposed development at Oscar Traynor Road. Last night, his party abstained on a proposal to ensure that every single home on that site will be genuinely affordable or social housing for working people.

The shared equity scheme is a bad scheme. It puts home buyers at risk. It should be scrapped and the money should be transferred to sensible schemes to deliver homes for working people at affordable prices. The only dogma I am hearing today is that coming from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and, unfortunately, the Green Party, which are allowing housing policy to be dictated by developers to the detriment of working people. That is a shame and it is why I am proposing this motion.

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