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

It does not have €6.25 billion. It currently has €3.75 billion between funds that have been spent, allocated and what is proposed today. To say it has access to the remainder of the funds is the most liberal use of the word “access” I have heard in some time. It is important we understand why. In theory, the LDA can go and borrow on the markets, but the LDA is telling us interest rates are so prohibitively high, it does not want to do that. In fact, I understand there is a very sharp disagreement between the LDA and Departments over the scale of its borrowing within the plan. In theory, it can borrow but it is telling us it is not going to, and unless it interest rates change and change dramatically, it will not borrow.

The Minister of State says it has access to another €1.25 billion of other sources but we do not know where that money is coming from. Sure, if it does St. Teresa's Gardens it will get the turnkey finance from Dublin City Council to buy the social accommodation, for example. That is not actually money that is locked down or clear in its sources. We have not even mentioned the sustainable tenancies and affordable rents investment initiative. While the Government has said €750 million will, in theory, be made available, in fact only a fraction of that has. We are discussing an amendment where the Government tells us it wants to give extra money to the LDA to increase its ambition and where in fact the LDA has a very large black hole in the funding programme for its current capital programme out to 2028 of €2.5 to €3 billion and there is no increased ambition in it. I will not press those points.

It seems, however, that the future-funding group the Minister of State mentioned has been set up to try and square the circle of how to get the LDA the €7 billion it needs to deliver the homes. Will he give us any additional information on that? We are being asked to approve an amendment for a very significant sum of what is essentially public money to go to the LDA without any certainty that the LDA has sufficient capital to fund its programme, or indeed to share concerns of others that, when homes are delivered, they would be affordable to the vast majority of people. Will the Minister of State tell us, for example, who is on that future funding group, how often it meets, what options it is looking at and when it is likely to report to Government? Will the Minister of State be coming back to us, depending on the outcome of the general election, with another request for a further €1.25 billion capitalisation because the borrowing he says is there has not materialised because interest rates have not come down sufficiently? The least the Minister of State can give us, given we are not opposing his amendment, is maximum transparency and clarity on the future funding and how the Government will fill that black hole that current sits at the heart of the agency's business plan.

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