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

I welcome the Land Development Agency, LDA. It will be an important mechanism as we look to undertake a strategic review of State lands and fully utilise these lands with the aim of building sustainable communities and affordable homes. I know that the Minister and his Department are passionate about affordable housing and committed to delivering it for Dublin and for other major urban centres. However, I have, on a number of occasions, reminded the Minister that there is a need for a not-dissimilar scheme in six to seven counties, namely, a sustainable housebuilding programme. County Longford will be at the front of the queue when this comes.

The current average price for a new standard three-bedroom semi-detached starter home should be around €229,000 in Longford, yet the average house price locally is around €122,000. The reality is that it has not been commercially viable for builders to build houses in County Longford and it is extraordinary to think that it is now 12 years since a three-bedroom semi-detached house was built commercially in the county. Throughout that time, the local authority will have turned down in excess of 500 families for social housing support on the basis that they were over the income threshold for supports. All these people now find themselves in a housing nightmare, unable to access social housing supports because they are earning too much and unable to access expensive private rental because they simply cannot afford it or the housing stock is not there. I am currently working with many young couples who are caught in this very bind. They are working hard and trying to save for a deposit on a house that in all likelihood will never materialise because the supply simply is not there.

Several counties that share a similar socioeconomic profile and housing market to County Longford need a cautious and measured intervention, modelled on the affordable housing scheme, in the hope of kick-starting sustainable housebuilding activity again in these counties. This is the type of measured, assured and cautious intervention that will reinvigorate provincial Ireland, just as the country saw throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when the Governments of those days put the principles of housing for all and affordable housing for all, front and centre.

The existing affordable housing scheme can and should be tweaked to suit counties such as Longford. It is to be hoped that local authorities will be mandated to invite expressions of interest for two to three housing developments in the county, with the guiding principle of sustainability and affordability for would-be homeowners. For many in rural Ireland, the media obsession with delivering affordable housing in the big cities and towns is frustrating, because many of these communities are themselves dealing with a nuanced but challenging housing crisis, and one that still could be easily fixed. I know that I have spoken with the Minister about this issue several times, and that he comprehends the viability challenge that currently exists for builders in the Longford market, and that of other counties. The hope and expectation is that the Minister will be able to tweak the affordability scheme to foster sustainable housebuilding in counties such as Longford and thereafter give local authorities the mandate to invite expressions of interest, with the aim of recommencing the construction of affordable housing in our communities.

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