Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I see Deputy Matthews in the Chamber. He chairs the Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. With this and the LDA Bill, he did a fantastic job in stewarding through legislation that will have an impact. I was remiss in not mentioning that during our debate on the LDA Bill. There was considerable discussion at the committee. While there were concerns and opposition to elements of the legislation, there was strong debate about where we are going in terms of housing.

In the debate on the previous group of amendments, I heard Opposition Deputies speak about their concerns and their desire for more detail. What I did not hear was an outright criticism that the Government is pointing in the wrong direction. It is clear that, in the 12 months the new Government has had the housing portfolio, there has been substantial work done in the right direction. We are leaning into the State providing housing rather than the market being the main provider. I could list all of the amendments. Deputy Duffy listed a number of them already. I had forgotten some of them. There has been substantial change.

The Affordable Housing Bill is another piece of the architecture that will fundamentally change the supply of affordable housing. Many Opposition Deputies stated that they could not keep up with the pace of legislation. The pace has been considerable, but that is because we are a Government of action rather than inaction. Many people wonder how the four elements of this Bill will help them. First, we are bringing back the idea of affordable purchase on council sites, a provision that was removed more than ten years ago. Councils will again be able to build affordable purchase housing on their lands in communities. This is important because people who were not eligible for social housing and could not get significant mortgages from the bank to allow them to purchase were utterly locked out until this legislative measure returned. While I was a member of Dublin City Council, proposals came to us time after time where there was not a tenure or income mix. Councils were given the terrible option of knowing that they were voting for communities that were not mixed or balanced. Every Deputy agrees that mixed tenure and mixed income developments are positive. We are giving councillors and councils back that power.

Second, we are putting in place an affordable rental model for the first time in the State. Many Opposition Deputies have spoken about this. Some of them were in government ten years ago but did nothing to introduce an affordable rental scheme for all the time they had the housing portfolio. Putting this model in place is important because, if people are above the income limits or otherwise ineligible for council housing, there will now be the equivalent of council housing for them.

There will be secure tenure in a complex in which their costs and rents are managed throughout their lives. That is an important change in public housing policy.

Third, we have increased the obligations on developers. We have doubled the developer obligation on private sites. There will be 10% affordable housing along with 10% social housing.

The last measure we will introduce, because all of this will take time to come on board and it will take time to build homes, is a 20% interest-free loan for five years with no obligation to pay down that 20% principal on that home over the lifetime of the mortgage. That is important because it gives people a shot to be able to afford unaffordable homes.

Other Members again mentioned that figure of €500,000. I want to be clear that Fianna Fáil, the Minister, the Green Party and Fine Gael do not believe €450,000 is an affordable cost for a home and repeating that lie is disingenuous. We do not believe it. In fact, we have named it as unaffordable and put in place a scheme to make it slightly more affordable, knowing the long-term solution is public housing on public land.

I welcome the amendments the Green Party has tabled. I ask the Minister to consider them because community-based housing is important. We have seen the benefits of projects such as Ó Cualann and the innovation they can bring. This Bill will shift the Ó Cualann model slightly because it will now be a supplier of housing rather than a co-operative. We need to think how it will be impacted. For a long time, it was the only affordable housing game on-site. The Minister and myself were on its sites. I want to make sure everything we do in this Bill encourages and allows Ó Cualann to continue doing what it is doing. I ask the Minister to consider the Green Party amendments.

My sole focus and that of many of my colleagues, in supporting this Bill, is to try to make sure we can put people and families in homes and bring an end to unaffordability. We will not get everything right. It will not be perfect, but we are doing everything we can, with every lever we can, to solve the housing crisis.

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