Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I ask the Minister of State to comment on the property sector.  I have spoken previously about the growing homelessness and housing crisis but the macro-economic dimension of this issue has not been discussed.  I raised the issue with the Fiscal Advisory Council at the Joint Committee on Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform.  The council was introduced by the troika to monitor imbalances in the macro-economic environment in this country.  It is alarming that we are putting in place property based tax incentives and that the Taoiseach is going to the United States and God knows where else to encourage big corporate investors to make money out of the housing crisis.  Large amounts of property assets currently in the hands of the State are being unloaded to these investors.  Alarm bells should be ringing in Europe in this regard.

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