84. Deputy Conor Sheehan asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage his plans to introduce measures to reduce cost-rental rents; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47823/26]

Sentiment score: 0.01

What are the Minister’s plans to introduce measures to reduce cost-rental rents? Will he make a statement on this because cost-rental rents are too high and are locking thousands of people out of the rental market? The average rent for a three-bedroom house in Oscar Traynor Road is now €1,800. More and more applicants are being refused on affordability grounds. There are flaws in the model, which I will go into in my supplementary questions.

Sentiment score: -0.06

I thank the Minister for his response. There are a couple of questions I want to ask. Has the Minister any plans in relation to all the fragmented subsidies that exist, like those related to the secure tenancy affordable rental investment scheme, STAR, and cost-rental equity loan, CREL, and the local authority funds. Does he have any plans to merge these? I also want to ask about barriers to delivering cost rental at scale and whether consideration is being given to extending the repayment period of the CREL loan. This is something that has been raised with me by approved housing bodies, AHBs, because we have had incidents recently where some AHBs were pulling cost-rental developments. They are saying they are struggling because of the requirement for the rent to sit 25% below the market rate, yet rents are already high enough and need to come down.

Sentiment score: 0.16

To push back on that a bit, while cost-rental rents are somewhat lower, being on average about 30% lower than rents in the private rental market, they are still far too high. A market rent in Dublin of €2,300 still means €1,725 a month. Will the Minister consider the length of time AHBs have to repay the CREL loan? That will answer some of the issues they have. Furthermore, will he consider decoupling our cost-rental model from the open market down the line and tying it entirely to underlying financial costs of delivery by amending the 2021 Act? When building costs and long-term maintenance rise, rents set at 25% below market rate cannot generate enough revenue to cover the actual cost of housing. This has forced bodies to scrap projects. We need to move away from the explicit linkage between initial cost rents and prevailing market rates.

Sentiment score: -0.11