Rory Hearne

That's absolutely untrue.

We actually set out a very clear proposal to harness and use the 160 billion that's private money in people's bank accounts, in deposits,

through a scheme that would be able to leverage it and invest it in housing.

It's called, in France, they have a scheme, a very, very solid savings scheme that's been in place for 100 years that essentially leverages money in bank accounts and then puts it into delivery of affordable housing.

We have put forward that as a very clear proposal.

And also, the type of private investment matters.

We have been very critical that this government has chased this really

expensive, build to rent, institutional investor type private investment, which is charging these huge rents.

And that is not a sustainable model of delivery of housing.

Back to, I want to finish the point I was making, Clare, about the rents.

If the average rent, right, of Dublin, 2,600, that equates to 31,200 a year.

That is a, when we talked earlier, or it was spoken earlier in terms of, you know, rents and how hard it is, you're talking about taking up to 80, 90% of a nurse's salary

that's their entire take-home pay to try and cover that rent these rents are not sustainable and there was a change the government made which was to remove the inter-tenancy rent cap and not to get over complicated about this but it's essentially when the tenant leaves that in it before there was a two percent rent cap in place one of the key measures that the government made in their rental laws was removing that and known alliance sets that out that that is behind

this rent increase we argued why did the government have to do that why did it have to rents are so high already that investors are investing people are building that's very clear but what this government did was essentially in response to the lobbying by the institutional investor said we're going to allow it go even higher higher because they're telling us they want even higher rents

And this is not a sustainable type of housing.

3,400 is what the rent has been charged in apartments in Poolbeg.

It feels to me like we're back in the Celtic Tiger period.

These are unsustainable rents, unsustainable house prices.

The alternative is clear.

The state builds affordable housing and it uses other mechanisms to leverage private finance that will deliver affordable rentals.