Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak against this ridiculous proposal from Government, namely, the gifting of €450 million to developers. It is the most Celtic tiger, Fianna Fáil-type of insanity that I have seen since they destroyed the economy in 2007 and 2008.

House prices are spiralling. They have increased by 15% in the past year. Rents have doubled in the past ten years. We have among the highest rents and house prices in the EU and Fianna Fáil's solution is to throw hundreds of millions of euro at developers. It is like déjà vu. It is genuinely unbelievable.

This scheme will gift €450 million to developers to subsidise the construction of apartments that will then be sold at market price. The Government is seriously going to do this. We now know that this will translate into up to €120,000 per unit in Dublin and up to €144,000 per unit outside of Dublin. The Business Postreported on Sunday last that the open market value of a two-bedroom apartment under the scheme will be €390,000 and a three-bedroom apartment is expected to be at least €450,000. It is absolute madness.

This is public money being spend seemingly without any thought, any cost-benefit analysis or any cost evaluation. How is it value for money for the taxpayer? How is it value for money for people who want to own their home? There is no affordability here.

This fund will inflate costs. It will make housing less affordable. It is the exact same as previous hare-brained schemes from the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, such as the help to buy and the shared equity schemes.

The Minister released his affordable housing targets for 2022 to 2026 and the figures were shocking in their lack of ambition. In County Louth, the target is 226, that is, 45 affordable houses on average a year. It outlines in black and white the Government's attitude towards affordable housing.

The most galling part of all of this is that the money being used in this scheme to line the pockets of developers could actually be put to good use. It could be used to provide housing that will address the unaffordable issue rather than making it worse. Sinn Féin's motion on Wednesday last called on the Government to use the funding for this scheme and the shared equity scheme to deliver an average of at lease 4,000 genuinely affordable homes each year. The affordable housing targets need to be revised as a matter of urgency. Funding needs to be redirected to capital investment in affordable housing for purchase, all schemes that push up the cost of housing need to be scrapped and, above all, affordable needs to be affordable.

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