Sinn Féin’s election manifesto is to include a promise to build 100,000 social and affordable homes by 2030, with 36,500 completed within the lifetime of the next government.

The party will today launch its housing policy, called “Better 4 Housing”.

Its main focus is on a return to building council and housing agency homes on a large scale.

The party says it will provide an extra €2.2 billion in capital spending in addition to what the Government has already provided it is own capital programme for building houses.

It says the best way of funding this is “through direct exchequer funding to begin with and a combination of direct capital spending and local authority borrowing as the plan progresses”.

“Estates will include both income mix and a mixture of social rental tenants, cost rental tenants, cost purchase owner-occupiers, sheltered housing and independent living units.”

Developers

Another measure will be to increase the provision of social and affordable houses that must be provided by developers from 10 per cent to 20 per cent of new housing developments.

“The idea that the market will solve everything, the key pillar on which successive government policies have rested, has been shattered by the boom and subsequent bust,” the document says. “In its wake lie destroyed lives and broken communities.”

As part of this approach, Sinn Féin will consider the establishment of a “strategic planning national housing corporation”.