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

It is simply factually incorrect for the Minister to come to the Dáil and say the rents on those three projects have not been finalised. They have been. The legal contracts have been signed and the Minister knows that, and people can judge that for themselves.

I am a strong advocate of cost rental - I have argued for it for more than two decades - and the Minister knows I supported the legislation to facilitate it even though the Government has taken a very good concept and mangled it beyond recognition, by which I mean the rents are simply not affordable. Between €1,500 and €1,600 a month for a two-bedroom unit, or between €1,700 and €1,900 a month for a three-bedroom unit, is not affordable. A growing number of people for whom cost rental was designed, who are not eligible for social housing, are being priced out. The number of applicants for cost-rental homes applying to the LDA and AHBs who are being refused because they do not earn enough to get cost rental but earn too much for social housing is growing ever larger. There is no such thing as cost-rental tenant in situ because not one AHB has bought one of those homes from the Housing Agency and they are still paying full market rents.

I ask the Minister a third time. Will he tell us what the rents will be in Oscar Traynor Road and O'Devaney Gardens, because he knows what they are?

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