Sinn Féin has announced plans to bring forward a motion on affordable homes to help tackle the housing crisis.

The party is proposing to dramatically increase direct capital investment in the delivery of affordable homes to buy.

Speaking about the motion, which will be debated in the Dáil today, Tuesday 10 May, Sinn Féin representative Eoin Ó Broin said: "House prices continue to spiral out of control. Far too many people on ordinary incomes are locked out of home ownership. The Government is out of touch and isn't grasping the extent or urgency of this crisis. Meanwhile, people are trapped into paying sky high rents while their hopes of home ownership slip even further out of reach.

"The latest CSO Property Price Index shows house prices increased by 15% state wide in the last year. The largest increases were in the Border region at 27%. Despite this crisis, the government is failing to act to support people on ordinary incomes. Shockingly, the Government delivered zero affordable purchase homes in 2020 or 2021. The Government has provided funding for just a paltry 550 affordable purchase homes through its Affordable Housing Fund in 2022. This is nowhere near good enough.

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"Not only is the government not helping people hit by the housing crisis, they are actively making the situation worse through their flawed policies. Government policies including Help to Buy and Shared Equity have and will continue to inflate house prices.

"Sinn Féin is committed to ending the housing crisis and ensuring that people can buy genuinely affordable homes. I am bringing forward this motion calling on the government to dramatically increase direct capital investment in the delivery by Local Authorities and Approved Housing Bodies of genuinely affordable homes to purchase.

"My motion also commits the government to urgently revise the affordable purchase home targets agreed with Local Authorities to deliver on average at least 4,000 affordable purchase homes a year from 2022 to 2026. It would also scrap the scandalous Help to Buy scheme and Shared Equity Loan scheme which push up prices and divert the funding into the delivery of genuinely affordable homes.

"Crucially, it would ensure that all affordable purchase homes are sold at prices that working people can afford.

"I am urging all TDs to back my motion in the Dáil tomorrow. The housing crisis is devastating lives across the country. The government can and must do much more to ensure people can buy a genuinely affordable home.

"Sinn Féin in government would make tackling the housing crisis a priority, to ensure that ordinary workers and families can buy a home."