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

The Taoiseach often says there are no instant solutions to the housing crisis but I wish to suggest something the Government could do that could make a dramatic and rapid impact on it. I attended an ICTU conference on housing the other day where one of the other speakers was from Vienna. She pointed out that in Vienna now, 60% of all new developments are required to be social or affordable housing. Imagine that; not 10% but 60%. When some developers kicked up, the local authorities told them that if they kicked up any more they would make it 80%. Some 60% of Vienna's residents live in subsidised housing. How does that apply here? We have a lot of housing going on and only 10% goes to social housing. Soon, but not now, 10% will go to affordable housing but huge numbers of people who are not eligible for social housing cannot afford the rents or house prices of the new developments, so they are being bought up by vulture funds and so on. What I am proposing is that we take a leaf out of the Vienna book and use the big budget surpluses the Government has for capital investment to buy a significantly higher proportion of the newly developed housing for both social and cost-rental housing, that is, for the people over the thresholds who are completely priced out of the housing market. That can be done, it should be done and it could be done relatively quickly. It would make a dramatic impact on the availability of affordable housing for those affected by the housing crisis.

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