Land Development Agency Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23 ============================================================ Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West People across the city who are looking to buy a home are despairing. The prices of houses and rents are way beyond what they can afford. They are looking to the Government for hope to be able to buy a home. We have reached the point where no ordinary people can afford to buy a home in our capital city. It costs €500,000 for the average home in the city. That is ten times the average salary. In the main, new supply being built is investor fund apartments being rented out at €3,000 and €4,000 a month. A shocking 50,000 adults over the age of 18 are stuck living in their parents’ home in Dublin city. They need the State to build genuinely affordable homes they can buy to allow them to start their lives and families. In Dublin city last year, however, not one affordable purchase home was delivered by the State - not one. In my constituency of Dublin North-West, over 7,000 adults are stuck living in their parental home in Finglas and Ballymun, and there are over 6,500 in Artane and Whitehall. How many affordable purchase homes does Dublin City Council plan to build for these 13,000 adults? Just 291 between now and 2030. Fianna Fáil's and Fine Gael’s plans for affordable housing for sale will only meet the need of 2% of the adults living in my constituency between now and 2030. That is not to mention the thousands of renters stuck looking to try to buy a home as well. Why is affordable housing so inadequate? It is because the starter home programme is not about delivering actually affordable homes but keeping house prices inflated for developers and investor funds. The Government does not want to undercut market prices. It refuses to set up a State construction company that could build tens of thousands of genuinely affordable homes for sale and rent. Will the Government take radical action? We need to see radical action for a generation of young people in their 20s, and increasingly their 30s and 40s, who cannot start their lives. They cannot buy a home in our capital city. Workers, young people and families cannot buy a home in this city. What is the Government going to do to change this and ensure there are affordable houses that people can buy in our capital city? It is beyond a crisis or a disaster. We need to see a significant change beyond what is planned. I can go through the figures for the Minister of State. They are terrifying in terms of the low numbers of planned delivery of affordable purchase homes in Dublin city. In my own area of north central Dublin, zero affordable purchase homes were delivered last year, and 73 are planned for 2026. There are zero planned for 2027, 95 for 2028, zero for 2029, and zero for 2030. If the houses are not planned to be built and are not in the city council’s plans, where are they going to come from? I am absolutely terrified. Not only is there poor delivery of affordable purchase now, but there is no sign of it coming. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-23