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

I would like to put on the record my response to a number of factually incorrect claims that the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, made in his contribution earlier. As always, it is a pity that he has not remained until the end of the debate. However, as usual we are more than happy that the Minister of State is present.

First, the Minister criticised the figures upon which this motion is based. He said in the response to the parliamentary question that there is also a reference to the possible delivery of affordable purchase homes by the LDA and Part V arrangements. The problem is that the overwhelming majority of counties listed in the parliamentary question will not have any LDA homes because the agency is precluded from being active in those areas. In those local authority areas where the LDA is active, very few affordable purchase homes will be delivered until 2024 or 2025. Even at that, we do not know whether they will be affordable. Therefore, to say there is an as yet unquantified number of affordable purchase homes related to the LDA is simply incorrect.

The Minister well knows that the changes to Part V of the Planning and Development Act apply only to land purchased this year and, therefore, if the land is purchased this year, it is unlikely there will be a planning application until next year, which means the homes will not be delivered for two to three years thereafter. Again, no affordable purchase homes are likely to be delivered during the lifetime of this Government via the changes to Part V.

It is also important to remember that a significant number of homes listed in the reply to the parliamentary question will not be affordable at all. Those at O'Devaney Gardens, Oscar Traynor Road and Donabate are good examples in that the all-in cost of an affordable home, or the full price that a hard-working family will have to pay, will be in excess of €400,000, taking into account the initial purchase price and the shared equity loan repayment. This is hardly what the Minister and I, if we were being honest with each other, would call affordable.

The suggestion that the shared equity loan scheme delivers affordable housing is absolutely ludicrous because the product can in fact be used to buy properties with a value up to €400,000 to €500,000. Those are not affordable homes, and the Minister knows that only too well.

He also criticised what he said was Sinn Féin's threadbare housing policy. Of course, he does this all the time. He waved a summary document I had sent him number some years ago that was based not only on extensive policy proposition documents but also on draft circulars and alternative, fully costed budgets for various years. Again, it is very disingenuous of him to do that.

He repeated the claim that the Government is investing €4 billion in public housing this year; it is not true. In this regard, we should look at the budget book the Minister for Finance announced in this Chamber last October. The total direct capital investment by the State, local authorities and AHBs is just under €1.5 billion, only €100 million more than the year before. Our proposal is to double direct capital investment by the State up to approximately €3 billion for the direct delivery of social and genuinely affordable homes. The Minister is correct that the numbers of completions and commencements are higher, we discussed this last week, but completions are up only to meet this year's target, namely 24,000 homes. It is nowhere close to the 40,000 homes we need. Of the 24,000 that will be delivered, how many will be genuinely affordable? How many will even be for sale on the open market? Far, far too few.

It is the same with commencements because an increasing number of apartment developments will take two to three years to complete and, therefore, the Government could well be out of office before any of the expected changes occur.

Probably the most disingenuous thing the Minister did was criticise Sinn Féin's affordable housing proposal. Once again, he misrepresented it. Let me repeat: we have a very specific and innovative proposal for affordable purchase that would ensure not only that a property is affordable to its first purchaser but also to every subsequent purchaser. It is very simple. You buy the house and it is yours to do what you want with, but you will not have been sold the public land. You can use the land for free indefinitely, as can your children and grandchildren, so long as it is not rented out to the private rental sector. When you sell it, you must sell it to another affordable-home purchaser. The price is index-linked for inflation and accounts for home improvements. This way, we would build up tens of thousands of privately owned and privately tradeable, but permanently affordable, homes. This is an eminently sensible idea.

The problem is that the Government simply does not understand the depth of the crisis. It is not investing enough, and the targets in the Minister's reply to the parliamentary question demonstrate that clearly, which is why I stand over this motion. I stand over the call to double capital investment to deliver 20,000 public homes per year, and particularly 4,000 genuinely affordable homes for working families year on year from now until 2026. Anything short of that is not acceptable, and that is why we will not support the Government's amendment.

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