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

Let me look at what Housing for All does. I will not talk to the Opposition but to the members of the public who want this problem solved. What does Housing for All do? First, if you do not qualify for social housing at the moment, Housing for All has solutions for you. If you do not qualify for social housing, you will now qualify for cost rental. If there are empty public sites beside you, in Dublin, Cork and other places where affordability is an issue, 100% of those will be used for public housing on public land, as provided for in the LDA Bill. The Minister has capped both deposits and rents. Housing for All provides councils with the ability to build public housing and affordable purchase homes on their sites, costing between €160,000 and €250,000 per unit. The budget is €20 billion, which is real money that will deliver real homes. As I said, the strategic housing development, SHD, process, which was essentially one that enabled developers to flip their sites, has been ended by this Minister. We have restored local democracy and local powers to local authorities.

There are so many things in sight that will all have local application on the ground. In my constituency, there will be affordable purchase and senior citizen homes on Parkview, senior citizen homes on Jamestown Road, all three different housing models on lands at Kildonan, a site at Whitehall car park and further sites at Oscar Traynor, the Dublin Port tunnel, Coultry Gardens, Sillogue, Balbutcher Lane, Finglas West Church and Belclare Drive. None of these is under construction but all of them will be built using the tools in Housing for All, tools that were not available in Rebuilding Ireland.

All of us will be judged, including the Minister, me and everyone in this House, both the Opposition and the Government, on whether we have delivered for the people with this plan. I hope we will do so, but the focus now shifts to implementation, to the local authorities, to the approved housing bodies and to every other provider and partner we can work with. The job did not end when we passed this legislation or when we passed the budget. It will only end when keys are turned in doors and more people get more homes.

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