Sinn Féin leader and Dublin Central TD Mary Lou McDonald has said that 1,000 applications for just 99 homes at the O'Devaney Gardens development "lays bare the government’s profound housing failures".

Ms McDonald said: "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. The overwhelming demand shows again the extreme desperation among workers and families to secure a home they can afford. 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 fiasco at O'Devaney demonstrates, in the sharpest way, that this government hasn’t a clue what affordability means in real life. 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. It is outrageous that these are the rip-off prices people face from what the government has the brass-neck to pass-off as an affordable housing scheme.

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"This debacle is the result of a bad government deal. Government gave the valuable land at O’Devaney to the developer effectively for free. The result of this sweetheart deal is that people desperate for an affordable home will be fleeced. It's a slap in the face for those caught up in the government’s never-ending housing crisis. This 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. 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."