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

Do not get me wrong. I know that AHBs contribute to the provision of social housing. I am in favour, especially when we have a €10 billion surplus, of the Government buying up a lot of the new developments, which otherwise would be rented at extortionate levels. We are swimming in money. Use that money to buy up the houses of people who are threatened with eviction and to buy up some of the new developments that would otherwise be rented out at extortionate levels or bought by wealth asset management companies which will sweat people with racketeering rents.

One must ask the question of how the Government failed and missed its targets. The big missing piece is the failure of the councils. The actual State delivery is pathetic. It is way below its targets. We are not building on public land. In many cases, the land that has been zoned and earmarked for social housing has not even been serviced to provide the housing in our area in big swathes of land.

There is a problem. The Government does not want to go back to the direct provision of council housing. It wants instead to rely on the private sector. That is at the root of our problem.

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