Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

A number of weeks ago, the Minister for housing stood in front of the Shanganagh Castle development in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and announced to the world that homes would be available for working people to purchase for €374,000. What the Minister forgot to tell people is that if they bought a house at that price, they would only own 70% of the home and the State would legally own 30% of the equity. In fact, if they wanted to buy the home outright and own it 100%, they would have to pay a minimum of an additional €140,000 of equity and, under the Minister’s scheme, they could only do so by paying that down in €10,000 lump sums.

Of course, this has been a feature of the Minister's presentation of his so-called affordable housing scheme. We remember he campaigned during the general election by promising to deliver 50,000 homes at prices of €250,000 or less. When taking up office, he ran around the country saying he would deliver homes for €160,000 to €250,000. In fact, if we look at the number of so-called affordable homes that this Minister has delivered, not only have they been tiny in number and way below each year's target, but the actual full price that any working person or couple has to pay to own one of these homes, in almost all cases, is well in excess of €300,000. In the Minister’s constituency, for example, if we look at the full market price that people have to pay, it ranges from €425,000 to €485,000 in Donabate and from €565,000 at Station Road in Lusk.

What this means is that the Minister's so-called affordable housing scheme is not affordable. It is not delivering homes at prices that working people can afford but it is also not real homeownership. As the Minister knows, anybody who buys one of those homes does not own the full home because the State will have an equity share of 10%, 20% or 30%. The most disappointing thing is the number of homes. For example, in 2020 and 2021, not a single affordable home was delivered by this Government; in 2022, just 332 such homes were delivered under this scheme; in 2023, it was 499; and then, snuck onto the Department's website late on Friday, the figures for the first half of this year show a paltry 166. This makes a mockery of the Minister and the Government's claim that they are serious about affordability and supporting homeownership.

Thankfully, there is an alternative and over the coming weeks, as we get into the election campaign, people will hear that alternative. The alternative is A Home of Your Own, Sinn Féin's comprehensive, detailed and fully costed alternative plan, which sets out not only how we can see the delivery of 300,000 homes over five years - social, affordable rental, affordable purchase and private purchase, as well as other forms - but, within that, 50,000 genuinely affordable homes delivered by the State to rent or buy, half of which will be to purchase at prices of €250,000 or slightly more. Unlike the Minister, who had no housing plan in opposition and took a full year to put together what he called a housing plan on taking office, we have published ours and it is here for people to see.

What it sets out is how a Sinn Féin government would deliver homes at that price. How we would do it is that we would separate the cost of building the home, and people would purchase the home at the cost of construction. They would own the home and be able to do with it what they want and, crucially, they would be able to pass it on to their children and grandchildren. As the State would take responsibility for the cost of the land, site servicing, development levies and utility connections, however, people would own the home 100% outright, with no hidden equity charges and no penalties when transferred on to their children, for a price of €250,000, €260,000 or €270,000. That is what real affordable homeownership looks like.

Of course, as we will hear in a moment when he makes his speech, the Minister is as desperate to misrepresent our policy as he is to misrepresent his own.

When people listen to the Minister, they must ask themselves whether there are any homes that will be bought in Shanganagh Castle for €300,000. The answer is that no homes will be bought there at that price. When those homes are purchased and we get the figures, we will see that it will be €400,000 to almost €500,000 per home. That is not affordable, it is not home ownership and it is why I relish the opportunity to debate the Minister over the next number of weeks to demonstrate how his plan has failed and failed utterly and how our alternative housing plan, A Home of Your Own, is the answer to that demand that working people have to put home ownership back into their reach - something the Minister has failed to do in his five years as Minister.

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