1,000 applications for 99 homes in O’Devaney Gardens is “fiasco” says McDonald

Sinn Féin leader and Dublin Central TD, Mary Lou McDonald has said that the government’s failure on housing is evident in her own backyard.

O’Devaney Gardens, within McDonald’s constituency of Dublin Central, has seen 1,000 applications for 99 homes, a situation which McDonald has painted as a microcosm of the housing crisis.

She said that 1,000 people applying for 99 homes “lays bare the government’s profound housing failures.”

“It is staggering, though not surprising, that we see 1000 applications for just 99 homes; that means more than 900 will be let down and left empty-handed.”

She said that the “overwhelming demand” points to the “extreme desperation” among workers and families in their bid to get a foot on the property ladder.

“This desperation has been created by the persistent failure of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to deliver genuinely affordable homes on the scale required,” the Sinn Féin leader said, and dubbed the situation a “fiasco.”

“This government hasn’t a clue what affordability means in real life,” she remarked.

“These are homes that should have been affordable to working people. However, the reality is that homes on this site will cost up to nearly half a million euros and rents up to €1895 a month.”

She said it was “outrageous” that these €1895 a month in rent is considered “affordable” and that the government has a “brass neck” to present the homes in the context of an affordable housing scheme.

“This debacle is the result of a bad government deal; the government gave the valuable land at O’Devaney to the developer effectively for free.”

Calling the deal a “sweetheart deal” for developers, she said developers were the ones laughing all the way to the bank while would-be home owners receive a “slap in the face.”

She said the situation would not be happening if the land had remained in public ownership, and the government had provided Dublin City Council with the financial support to develop these homes in 2018.

“The scandal at O’Devaney Gardens lays bare the government’s profound housing failures. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have persistently set affordable housing targets that are far too low, and then miss those targets every year.”

She stated “in far too many instances, when so-called affordable homes do come on stream, we see price tags far beyond what is affordable; this can’t go on.”

“What we need urgently is a major change of direction. We need to use public land for public housing. We need purpose and action to deliver homes that working people can actually afford and at the scale that overcoming this crisis demands.”