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

Sinn Féin's alternative housing plan, A Home of Your Own, sets out what would be the most ambitious public housing programme in the history of the State. We would deliver more than twice the number of social homes that have been delivered in the past five years by this Government and about ten times as many affordable homes. The big difference is that those homes would be genuinely affordable. I appreciate that the Minister of State is reading from a script prepared for him by officials from another Department. However, some of the information they gave to him to read out just is not factually correct. When it is stated that 8,000 affordable housing supports have been delivered, less than half of those are actual homes that exist and that people live in. The rest are approvals for a controversial first home scheme that may never get drawn down and may never be used to purchase homes. Also, the use of the word "affordable" does seem to be elastic in those briefing points. The overwhelming majority of the less than 1,000 affordable homes delivered by local authorities are at prices above €300,000, €350,000 and, in some cases, €400,000.

The Minister of State was provided with a figure of €260,000 for the average purchase price. When he goes back and asks the officials to explain that to him, he will see it is just not true. I have asked the Department and the line Minister to publish those figures. The actual average entry-level purchase price is closer to €300,000. That is a big difference. However, the Government keeps failing to tell people that when they buy at that entry-level price, they do not own the entire home. The State owns 10%, 20% or 30% of the equity - of the open market value. I have the figures here, and I can explain it to the Minister of State if the officials have not taken the time to do so. What it means is that the full market price a person would have to pay if they wanted to own the home outright is close to €400,000 on average. In most parts of Dublin, including in the Minister of State's constituency, the full price someone will have to pay to own a home outright is €500,000. If the person involved does not pay that, their children will have to pay it in full when the house is passed on to them. If someone does want to pay it, under the rules of the scheme, they can only pay the amount down in lump sums of €10,000. This is so far away from either affordable housing or real homeownership that I have to say the senior Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has a brass neck to come in here and defend it.

The Minister demanded a series of answers from Sinn Féin. He was clearly aggravated that I have not been answering his questions over the past while, but he does not even stay to listen to the answers. Let me respond briefly. I am absolutely confident that the pillar banks will lend into our affordable purchase scheme. Why? Because in a statement to Prime Time that was read out in a debate, when the Minister and I were both appearing on an RTÉ programme, it stated by the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, BPFI, that banks would lend into the scheme just like they lend into any other Government schemes. The rules would be the same, and we would not expect it to be any other way. The big difference between me and the Minister is that before I publish something, I go and talk to the BPFI. I met its representatives twice, the second time in the company of Deputy Doherty. We had very detailed discussions with them before we published our plan. They set out exactly the requirements they would have to allow their members to lend with security into the scheme. That is in stark contrast to the Minister, who passed legislation, opened a scheme, invited home buyers to put down deposits on homes and had not uttered a word to the BPFI. It took the Minister so long to act after people had paid their deposits that they had to wait for a year to buy their homes because they could not draw down their mortgages. I do my homework. People might not like the policy or might disagree with it but there is no doubt that pillar bank lending and local authority lending will be available.

The Minister also stated that we have nothing for people earning over €90,000 a year. That is not true. Let us be very clear, however. The vast majority of those who simply cannot buy homes, as the Minister of State knows from his constituency, are working people and singles on incomes of between €50,000 to €80,000 and up to €90,000. They are not able to afford the homes the Government is providing. That is what our affordable purchase scheme sets out to address. For those who have incomes over €90,000, we are going to bring down the price of new-build homes. W have set out in great detail how we will do it. Also, they would be better off under our scheme because we would abolish stamp duty. Ultimately, the big difference between our party and the Minister's is that it wants to push up house prices for buyers and we want to bring them down. The only way we can tackle the affordability crisis is to bring down the price of new homes on the public side and on the private side. The only way to do that is to implement A Home of Your Own. On that basis, I commend the motion to the House.

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