Deputy Mary Lou McDonald- speech from 10 May 2022

Thank you, Karen Corley, Taoiseach, I want to ask you about your government's plan to pay big developers up to 120,000 euros for each apartment they build. This has people shaking their heads in disbelief. It essentially means you propose to give 450 million euros of taxpayers' money to a few developers. That's astonishing. But what's more astonishing is that there will be no cut in the price of those apartments that these developers will put on them. market for anything between 400,000 and 600,000 euros, way beyond the reach of ordinary workers and families. This is a transfer of millions of taxpayers' money to developers with no public benefit, and at a time, Taoiseach, when local authorities and housing bodies are crying out for funding. I want to ask you, how do you justify a misguided policy like this? Thank you. Thank you. First of all, the whole idea here is to, first of all, there has been a well-documented viability gap between the delivery cost of eligible apartments and the open market sale price of the apartments, which is preventing a lot of apartments from being built. And there is a very significant issue here in the cities in particular, and that we want to enable affordability for people to be in a position to buy. And the beneficiaries of this grant would be the general public and who would be in a position to buy apartments now in city schemes, and the apartment supply sector, who can bring stalled schemes to construction. It is one part of a whole range and suite of measures designed to increase social affordable and private housing available. It will only bridge the gap between the achievable price and the open market and cost of construction, which in many cases expected less than £120,000.