Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This Government's approach to housing favours vulture funds and institutional investors. Sinn Féin in government will turn the tables on these funds in favour of ordinary workers and their families. For too long, successive Governments have treated housing as a commodity, so much so that people who are on relatively good incomes have found themselves squeezed out of the market, leaving home ownership as an impossible dream. Sinn Féin in government will change this. We will deliver affordable purchase homes at scale for €230,000, and for less outside of Dublin.

The Bill is called the Affordable Housing Bill, but this Government's definition of "affordable" is not on this planet. In fact, I put it to the Minister of State that sometimes it is not even in the galaxy. The only solution is to build public and affordable homes on public land.

There is no doubt that during this debate the Government speakers will engage in deflection, they will ignore the failings of the Bill and they will tell lies about the Opposition. The Government says that we are voting against housing, when in reality we are voting against the gifting of public lands to private developers to enable them to screw ordinary workers and their families with overpriced homes as we saw recently with the rezoning in Fingal. It is Fianna Fáil councillors who are standing in the way of affordable housing. The Government says that the Opposition is voting against housing, but in reality we are voting against unsustainable development where towns like Newbridge are crying out for a new bridge over the River Liffey to relieve traffic gridlock. We are voting against the rapid expansion of towns such as Kildare without sustainable development. What is the point of building homes in a field with no services, no sports facilities and in some areas no school places such as for those pupils in Kildare town and Newbridge, with just two months left until school starts again? We need to provide infrastructure before or during the delivery of homes.

I have major concerns about the shared equity loan scheme section of the Bill. A shared equity loan does not make a home more affordable. It simply increases the level of debt held by working families, at best to lock in what otherwise would be unsustainably high house prices and at worst to inflate those prices even further. I am not alone in my concerns about shared equity. Numerous commentators have said it will have an inflammatory effect on house prices. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, the National Economic and Social Council, NESC, Professor Karl Whelan, and the former Secretary General of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Mr. Robert Watt, all share this view. The Green Party's housing spokesperson had the good sense to buy the book by my colleague Deputy Eoin Ó Broin, Home: Why Public Housing is the Answer.I suggest that the rest of the Government would do the same.

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