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

I thank the Minister of State for his remarks. The Irish Glass Bottle Housing Action Group was formed in 2016. It has been campaigning vigorously and has secured cross-party and widespread community support during that time. For the five years of that campaign, Fine Gael has been in government and in charge of housing for most of that time.

What really galls many people in the affected communities is that the State had an opportunity to buy this land at a discount. This would have guaranteed greater affordability but the Fine Gael Minister with responsibility for housing at the time chose not to take that option. We are now faced with the genuine fear that the price the developer will set for affordable homes on the site will be between €500,000 and €600,000. That is the view of Dublin City Council. The key issue here for the people in that part of our city, and others who would like to live there, is price. An affordable home means an average home purchased for a price of approximately €250,000. There may or may not be a serviced sites fund clawback charge on top of that.

The Minister of State is absolutely correct. The developer is benefiting from significant and much-needed infrastructural grants, to which I have no objection. It is €50 million, in fact, of infrastructural grants between the Department of Transport and the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. With an affordable housing fund, that figure increases to up to €60 million, depending on where that application eventually goes. NAMA also continues to have an interest in the land and while we do not know the price, that value could be anything up to €90 million.

A lot of taxpayers' money is, therefore, sitting in that site, from which ultimately the developer will benefit because that infrastructure and that serviced sites fund will unlock many aspects of the development. All that needs to be factored into the price that Ronan Group Real Estate and Lioncor eventually offer Dublin City Council for the purchase of the affordable homes. That would actually average out at a unit discount of approximately €250,000 per affordable home, assuming the affordable homes will cost in the region of €600,000.

The purpose of this motion is to communicate to the Government not only the need for it to get more involved in supporting Dublin City Council and the local community, but also to send a very clear signal to the developer. If the developer wants the Government to be a partner in this hugely important strategic development zone master plan and its delivery, it has to offer units for affordable purchase at a significantly lower price than €500,000 or €600,000. That means the developer has to absorb a large volume of the discount. It cannot all be placed on the shoulders of the affordable housing fund and the clawback for the affordable purchaser.

I strongly welcome the commitment by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to bring the various players together. Doing so after the by-election is certainly the right time but it must be a real engagement. It must involve the Departments of Transport, Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and Finance weighing in behind Dublin City Council, its councillors and the communities of Ringsend, Irishtown and the surrounding areas to get the best deal possible. I agree entirely with the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, that it must be the best deal for the taxpayer and the city but, crucially, it must also be the best deal for affordable purchasers. That means delivering homes at a price working families can genuinely afford. The key test of success will not be what anyone of us says today but whether those affordable homes become a reality for the working families who are being priced out of that part of our city at this time.

I welcome the amendment from People Before Profit. I am more than happy to accept it as it is completely within the spirit of our motion.

I will conclude by responding to two of the Minister's broader points. He is absolutely right that the time for delay must end. That includes, for example, the delay in the Oscar Traynor Road development. The Minister must decide whether he is going to step up to the plate and work with Dublin city councillors and officials to deliver those 800-plus social, affordable rental and affordable purchase homes. So far, he has been very reluctant to state his intentions in that regard. The Minister also needs to explain why other developments are logjammed. The St. Michael's Estate development, for instance, will comprise 100% public homes. In fairness to the Minister of State, Deputy English, when he was in the Department, he worked very well with many of us in this Chamber and with the local community. However, that development was approved in principle in 2018 and not a brick has been laid.

Both the dead hand of the Department of Pubic Expenditure and Reform and aspects of the four-stage approval process of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage must change if we are to get these projects up and running. In Kishoge in my constituency, where more than 250 social and affordable homes are to be built, South Dublin County Council is being made to jump through hoop after hoop by both Departments to do all sorts of appraisals, even though this scheme to provide between 8,000 and 11,000 homes was already agreed in principle as part of the strategic development zone that was voted on by elected council members, albeit opposed by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in the single largest opposition of any group of councillors to a residential development anywhere in the State. In fact, the Fine Gael group leader appealed it to An Bord Pleanála, delaying it by a year. Now we have got it through, thanks to Sinn Féin and others, we need it to progress.

In regard to the Affordable Housing Bill 2021 and the legislation that is before the Dáil today, it is important to note that Bills do not build homes. Direct investment does so. We will judge the Government's commitment to affordable housing not by what it says but by what is in the housing for all action plan when it is published and, crucially, what element of increased investment we see in budget 2022. Only increased investment and the direct delivery of affordable homes for working people will bring this crisis to an end.

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