Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

I would like the House to note that the Minister, of course, completely avoided the question and instead gave what can only be described as an Orwellian response to a simple question.

There is no new starter home programme. What the Government has done is it has taken a bunch of schemes that existed under the previous Government's plan and, indeed, its predecessor, it has bundled them all up and it has added them into a global figure.

The reason it is important, in particular, that there are targets for the delivery of cost rental and affordable purchase is the Minister funds them. He sets the targets for local authorities, AHBs and the LDA, directly and indirectly, to deliver those homes. Of course, as we know, last year the cost-rental targets were missed by a factor of 15% and the Minister's affordable purchase target was missed by a staggering 61%.

On top of that, of course, increasingly these homes are not affordable. Right across Dublin, for example, the full price of a so-called "affordable home" delivered under the Minister's affordable purchase scheme, if you want to own the home outright, is up to €500,000. In nobody's calculations is that affordable.

Similarly, we are now seeing cost rents coming in as high as €19,000 a month for a three-bedroom house, and €17,000 a month for a two-bedroom unit. A growing number of people who are not eligible for social housing are excluded from the Minister's schemes. Can I ask again why he has not included a specific target for cost rental and affordable purchase? Has he ditched the target or is he just hiding it from us?

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