Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do. I invite the Minister to drive with me along the N11 towards Cherrywood and down to Shankill. At the end of the road, he will find the LDA's first site, but there will not be houses there for another two years. Before we get there, he will see many large apartment developments that are nearing completion or have just been completed. Who will own them and who will live in them? Currently, international investment funds will own them. They will rent them for €2,500 to €3,000 per month, which none of the workers at St. Vincent's hospital or the schoolteachers who are leaving Dublin can afford. If the State uses the money it has in the rainy day fund to buy them and then designate some for affordable purchase and some for social housing, those teachers, nurses and construction workers who need to work and live in Dublin could afford to do so. Would that direct investment in housing people now not be better expenditure than paying large amounts on the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, the housing assistance payment, HAP, and leasing, which is ongoing current expenditure?

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