Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am speaking to my amendments Nos. 12 and 24 in this group. When it comes to why housing is unaffordable, private developers are at the heart of this. Turning to them to try to deliver affordable housing when they are the ones who are pushing up prices, which we all understand is part of their business model, is a completely flawed approach. Public private partnerships will mean so-called affordable homes will be delivered that are far too expensive. Tens of thousands of people who need these homes will, therefore, continue to be locked out. That is the problem.

There are also problems with very slow delivery and with the drip-feeding of homes to maintain high market prices. That also ignores that we are now in a situation where very low-cost finance is available to the State, which can be done in terms of public borrowing and public investment. That finance is much more affordable and cost-effective than private finance. You do not have to look at the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, paper from a few weeks ago to know that. Look at the Part V proposals submitted by Bartra as part of the O'Devaney Gardens development. You can see that each home there, according to the developer's breakdown of costs, is coming out at €40,000 more because of the private finance mechanism part of that delivery. On top of that are other additional costs, fees, profits and so forth.

To be very clear, my colleagues on councils do not and have not voted against social and affordable housing. They voted against selling off public land to private developers to develop full-cost, full-price market homes, for which they do not apologise. It is not something they or I would support. We are trying to copper-fasten affordability into affordable housing with these amendments. It is very important.

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