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

I strongly support the Green Party amendments. I tabled similar amendments to the Land Development Agency Bill to promote the idea of community housing trusts. Unfortunately, we do not have a legislative basis for such innovative forms of housing development. They work well in continental Europe, especially in countries such as the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. It would be a positive addition to have that kind of opportunity in which people, particularly those who bring their skills to self-organised architecture projects, would be able to work in partnership with, for example, local authorities, access finance and develop genuinely permanently affordable homes. Self Organised Architecture is an organised group here, which has been lobbying Deputies and Ministers. If the Minister is not minded to support these amendments at this stage, I agree with Deputy McAuliffe that he should continue to engage on the issue and come back on it at a later stage.

In response to two other points the Minister and his backbench colleague made, caps for eligibility for affordable housing was first introduced by Fianna Fáil when it was last in government. Those caps are still in place. They exist for the Rebuilding Ireland home loan and for the current affordable purchase housing projects that have come on stream. The Minister is correct that the original caps his party introduced, which I included in a consultation document last summer, are too low. That is why all of us agree that, where those caps should be introduced, they should be higher and reviewed annually based on empirical evidence from the Central Bank and the ESRI.

The difficulty is where there are no caps, as with the help to buy scheme, 60% of the people who avail of that scheme do not need it. That is an independent result from the Oireachtas budgetary committee's report on that. It is the same with the English and Welsh shared equity loan scheme. That will be a feature of the problem with this legislation. The difficulty with Deputy McAuliffe's arguments is there is nothing transformational in this Bill. Two key aspects were policies of the previous Government and the Government before that. The substantive detail of the cost rental and affordable purchase elements of this Bill, which is the majority of its text, were developed under the previous Government and I do not see evidence of much change.

What would be significant is if this Government were to dramatically increase the levels of investment. It did not do it in its first budget. I wait with interest to see if that happens. Having legislation, in and of itself, will not produce the homes Deputy McAuliffe and I want. The level of investment is key and until we see that, particularly direct investment in local authorities and AHBs, we will not see the volume of units required.

There are fundamental concerns with this Bill. Deputy McAuliffe is wrong. The shared equity loan scheme will increase mortgage credit in the market, which is increasingly depressed in terms of supply. That will inflate house prices. That is almost the universal view of everybody, bar his own party. Even his colleagues in government, privately and some publicly, share that concern. Rather than helping people, it will do exactly what help to buy did. It will benefit, in the main, people who do not need it, while pushing up houses prices and making it more difficult for everybody else.

With respect to Part V - our difficulty is we are unlikely to get to those amendments because they are at the end - there are a number of significant concerns and uncertainties about the way in which those sections of the Bill are currently drafted. We only have the three hours. We could have had a committee session last Thursday. That slot was available. We could have had a committee session next Tuesday and Thursday. We will not get to tease out exactly how they will work and whether the private developer interests, which seep into this Bill under every section, will also infect those sections and undermine the delivery of genuinely affordable homes to rent or buy.

I support the amendments of Deputies Duffy and Matthews and urge the Minister, whether today or at a later stage, to take them on board. Not only are they well-intended, they would be a good addition to our housing system.

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