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

The fact is that the market is proving incapable of delivering affordability for houses to buy or rent for large swathes of young and working people. That is the reality. There has been an uptick in the delivery of social housing. It has not been enough but we are beginning to see some progress, not least because the Government adopted a proposal we suggested, which was to start buying some of the houses delivered by the market that are too expensive for people to buy and having the Government deliver them as social housing. As one of the Government Deputies has just told the Taoiseach, we are way behind on affordable housing. In my area, zero cost-rental or affordable houses were delivered last year. Under our planning laws, we get 10% social and 10% affordable housing as part of some schemes. What does that mean? It means that 80% of what the market is delivering is unaffordable to the vast majority. I honestly and genuinely ask what is the point in building unaffordable housing because the only people who can buy it are very rich people or investment funds, which buy the houses and charge extortionate rents. We must do something about this urgently. If the Government is serious about looking for ideas, and I acknowledge it has taken on some of the suggestions we have made in certain regards, I ask that we have a serious discussion whereby the Government listens to some our suggestions about how we can deliver more. We should be following what is being done in places such as Vienna where the policy is that between 50% and 60% of all housing delivered must be social or affordable housing. What is the point otherwise?

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