McDonald housing claims questioned by FG Senator

Fine Gael Senator John Cummins has questioned Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald’s goal of making new homes in Dublin available for €300,000.

“The real question that Sinn Féin has astonishingly got away without answering so far is how will they do it? There is not a single explanation for it.”

“You will regularly hear Sinn Féin representatives use catchy soundbites such as ‘we will deliver genuinely affordable homes’, but you will never hear them explain how.”

“The have not set out a policy document outlining how they will get house prices to this magic €300,000 figure.”

The specific figure was cited by McDonald in a December interview with The Irish Times.

She said “the objective has to be to get house prices as low as we feasibly can, to remedy a situation where in the greater Dublin area we are now told a couple would have to have a combined income of €127,000 per annum.”

Cummins stated, “Sinn Féin’s housing policy is to now create uncertainty in the construction sector in the same way they have done with the rental sector by plucking figures out of thin air and claiming you can deliver homes for a certain value without any regard for the actual cost of delivering homes.”

He cited statistics from the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland that showed that the average cost of delivering a 3-bed semi-detached home nationally was €397,000, with a figure of €461,000 published for the greater Dublin area.

The report stated the figure was made up of 53% hard costs such as materials and the cost of construction, while 47% was made up of soft costs such as land, margin, levies, finance costs etc.

“Sinn Féin’s proposal would close the construction sector overnight and send hundreds of thousands into negative equity. Once again Sinn Fein have delivered a hollow soundbite in place of policy,” the Fine Gael Senator claimed.

“While Sinn Fein and other opposition parties engage in soundbite policy, Fine Gael is busy increasing the supply of new homes and supporting those who want to bring vacant properties back into productive use.

Cummins said that in 2023, 470 first-time buyers purchased or built a home every week, which he says is proof that Fine Gael’s housing policy is working.