Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to use this as an opportunity to welcome the historic investment we have in the delivery of much-needed social and affordable homes in this budget. Young people, as we all know, feel locked out of the housing market. I do not want to live in a city or in a country where home ownership is something to which my generation cannot aspire.

That is why I am glad that budget 2022 will help people in that situation. It allocates significant investment to local authorities to deliver affordable homes on public land.

It provides funding for the first ever national cost-rental scheme, which means long-term, secure, affordable leases for those who wish to rent. It provides for the shared equity scheme for new build homes, which will unlock planning permissions on sites that are currently lying idle and will help people who would not otherwise be able to afford to buy. It also continues the help-to-buy scheme, which has helped 20,000 people who needed that support to purchase a house. That is something Sinn Féin opposed. Listening to the debate, one would be forgiven for thinking that Sinn Féin voted against the Government's Affordable Housing Bill. It did not; it voted for it. Sinn Féin also opposed the Land Development Agency, LDA, the body that will deliver public homes on public land. It did not even attempt to shape that legislation with amendments. Its opposition to the shared equity scheme stands in total contradiction to its overseeing of a similar shared equity scheme in Northern Ireland. Its opposition to the help-to-buy scheme is totally at odds with this-----

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