Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "That Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following: "notes that:

— as recognised in the Government's Housing for All - a New Housing Plan for Ireland (Housing for All) strategy, there is a housing crisis in Ireland affecting ordinary working people who aspire to the security of home ownership, which demands a response from the Government on an unprecedented scale;

— Ireland is experiencing an acute gap between housing supply and demand, exacerbated by the economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and global supply-chain disruption, which requires both short and longer-term State interventions to address it;

— increased supply in the coming years is the fundamental solution to Ireland's housing problems, along with a targeted range of measures to increase access to affordable homes for those that need this support; and

— it is the ambition of the Government that everybody should have access to sustainable, good quality housing to purchase or rent at an affordable price, with the Housing for All strategy launched last year setting out plans to achieve this;

welcomes:

— the development and implementation of the Housing for All strategy, and the commitment to massively expand the role of the State and to spend unprecedented sums of Exchequer multi-annual funding commitments to achieve the Government's aims;

— the ambitious targets in the Housing for All strategy of over 300,000 new homes by 2030, including 36,000 for affordable purchase homes and 18,000 Cost Rental homes to provide competitive rents and long-term security of tenure for middle income earners, recognising that delivery will ramp up over time with increases in industry capacity and the effects of Government interventions;

— the successive record levels of State investment in housing under Budget 2021 and Budget 2022, comprised of capital investment of over €4 billion and including funding of €676 million specifically focused on affordability measures this year;

— the enactment of the Affordable Housing Act 2021, the most comprehensive housing affordability legislation in the history of this State, which was passed overwhelmingly by this House and provided the basis for two new affordable purchase schemes and a national Cost Rental scheme;

— the use, for the first time, of a Housing Need and Demand Assessment, which was developed in co-operation with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and which supports the identification of the level of housing need for affordability constrained households on a local authority basis;

— the setting of distinct affordable housing delivery targets for local authorities, the Approved Housing Body (AHB) sector, the Land Development Agency (LDA) and the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity scheme, which sees the numbers of affordable purchase and Cost Rental homes in the period to 2026 set at almost 29,000; this includes a target of 9,000 homes for local authorities, 8,000 for the 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity scheme, almost 4,000 for AHBs, and almost 8,000 for the LDA;

— the confirmation that measures introduced by the Housing for All strategy are helping to increase housing supply, with 5,669 new homes added to the national stock in Q1 of this year, the most in any first quarter since this official statistic began back in 2011, and 22,219 new homes completed in the last four quarters;

— the clear increase in construction activity visible in the 34,846 new homes commenced in the 12 months to March 2022, the highest rolling 12-month total since comparable data was first published;

— the positive independent forecasts from the ESRI and the Central Bank, despite foreseen disruptions to construction, of housing completions for 2022 and 2023 meeting and potentially exceeding the targets in the Housing for All strategy;

— the passage of the Land Development Agency Act 2021, establishing a powerful new body with a remit to take a strong role in delivering affordable housing for rent and purchase;

— the delivery this year, for the first time in well over a decade, of affordable homes made available for purchase by local authorities, with the first such homes being made available in Cork City, Fingal and South Dublin at significantly discounted prices ranging from approximately €218,000 to €285,000, with more new homes to follow across the country later in the year;

— the planned launch in the coming months of the national 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity scheme in the private market, which will help around 8,000 first-time buyers to purchase new homes in the lower half of the price distribution over the years to 2026;

— the Government's reform and expansion of the Local Authority Home Loan, with a budget of €250 million in 2022 alone, to improve affordability for lower and middle-income earners through lower fixed interest rate long-term loans, and broadening of the eligibility criteria to support higher numbers of single applicants struggling to purchase in Dublin, Cork and Galway; and

— the fact that over 32,700 first-time buyers' households have been supported into home ownership by the Help to Buy scheme since 2017; and

fully supports:

— the Government's continuing work under the Housing for All strategy in partnership with local authorities, the LDA, AHBs, and private industry which over the course of the plan will deliver an average of 4,000 affordable purchase and 2,000 Cost Rental homes per year;

— the use of the multi-annual Affordable Housing Fund to support local authorities in delivering new homes for affordable purchase and Cost Rental, with 1,731 new homes approved for funding so far, and further applications from local authorities currently under assessment;

— the new affordable purchase schemes via local authorities and 'First Home' Affordable Purchase Shared Equity, which will support households with affordability challenges to achieve home ownership;

— the further expansion of the Cost Rental sector in Ireland, which has already seen the first homes tenanted at rates of 40 per cent below market through the work of local authorities, the LDA, and AHBs; and

— the LDA's ambitious plans to deliver affordable homes, with construction to begin this year on over 800 new homes in Cork City and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, planning applications recently lodged for over 2,300 more homes on other State lands, and proposals under the Home Building Partnership (Project Tosaigh) to deliver 5,000 new homes by 2026 through engagement with private developers to unlock land with full planning permission that is not being developed due to financing and other constraints."

I thank the Deputy opposite for tabling the motion to give us an opportunity to have a debate on homeownership and affordable housing and to interrogate some of the things Members have said. I welcome that opportunity. One thing that is and should be recognised is that there is absolutely a difficulty with affordability. The whole thrust of Housing for All is to tackle that. I will expand on that shortly. There is and has been a fundamental difficulty with supply, and we cannot ignore that. We cannot ignore the past two years or, indeed, the past ten years of undersupply. That is why it is crucial the Government brought forward the Housing for All plan, which is the first plan any government has brought forward that is funded on a multi-annual basis to the tune of €4 billion to deliver more new-build social homes than ever before, 90,000 between now and 2030 and 9,000 alone this year, with 54,000 affordable homes, 29,000 of them between now and 2026. I will deal with the matters raised in Sinn Féin's motion and some of the statements Members have made. We are delivering cost rental for the first time ever, and we need private homes too. We need 300,000 new homes between now and 2030 to address the undersupply of housing. We passed the Affordable Housing Act. I welcomed the support of most Deputies, with the exception of, I think, about eight at that stage, because I assumed from the fact Members opposite supported the Bill that they supported the thrust of the legislation.

Let us deal with the analysis that has been made based on a response to a parliamentary question. There has been a deliberate misrepresentation of the affordable housing targets that have been set. The affordable housing targets that have been referred to relate to local authority-delivered affordable homes and number 7,550 in total across the 31 local authorities between now and 2026. What it states in the response to an Teachta Ó Broin, a fact to which he did not refer earlier, is that, in addition to that targeted local authority delivery, affordable purchase and cost rental homes will also be made available by approved housing bodies - they deliver real homes too, as I think Members opposite will be aware - and by the Land Development Agency, LDA, in these local authority areas as part of the overall affordable housing delivery commitment under Housing for All. In addition to that will be the affordable homes delivered under the First Home shared equity scheme, which we will launch and which will be available to people from 1 July of this year. Each member of the Sinn Féin Party has decided to look at just part, one aspect, of that delivery. That does not include Part V delivery either, I might add, and Members opposite know that too, but it does not suit their narrative. That is okay.

We need to get back to a bit of reality and back to some truth and be honest with people. Yes, there is an issue with affordability. I am acutely aware of that.

I believe in homeownership and I believe in giving people a start so that they can own their own homes.

When I look at the Sinn Féin "plan" - I use that word loosely - which is a 16-page document, eight pages of which are nice pictures of cups of coffee, I look through what Sinn Féin has looked for.

See this speech in context