Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I might manage to give a minute to my colleague, Deputy Daly.

I am struck by the sums of money we are talking about. We have so many debates in this House where we talk about there not being money for this and that, and €450 million has been found for this scheme. Now I like the idea of breathing life into our cities and ensuring that our city centre cores are strong and that we have affordable apartments, but this is not the way to do it. There is not even a condition on affordability. When we are handing €450 million over to developers, there is nothing to say that it will not simply be absorbed by them. We will not see a benefit. We will not see apartments or housing become more affordable.

By every metric, as has been already said, the housing crisis is getting worse when one looks at rents, when you look at house prices and when you look at the number of people finding themselves in homeless situations.

Our clinics are inundated, as, I am sure, are the Minister's, with people who are getting notices to quit who have nowhere to go but also with people who do not qualify for social housing lists, who have been knocked off social housing lists because of the income thresholds and who have no hope of getting a commercial mortgage. The advice that we can give them is limited because the schemes that are available are limited and this will not help them.

This will not change how affordable apartments are. There are apartments right now in Cork, two-bedroom new builds, for half a million euro and three-bedroom ones for €695,000. In many respects, that is as bad as Dublin. That is the situation that we are facing in Cork. They are unaffordable and absolutely out of reach for people.

This is not the way to go. I urge the Minister to put that €450 million into vacant homes and into building affordable houses on public land and making sure that they are actually at affordable prices.

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