Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Now NAMA is building on 46 sites. I do not know about the prices in other areas, and I would be interested in hearing from Deputies in those areas, but in Dublin, what are the prices of these houses and how will they ever do anything to help anyone involved in the housing crisis? There is a way NAMA could house between 50,000 and 100,000 people right now. NAMA could wipe out the social housing list in this country, if its brief was changed. I am not blaming the three witnesses here today because it is the Government that decides the brief. However, in an answer to a parliamentary question, and on one of the pages of his presentation Mr. Daly confirms this, it was stated that NAMA has a claim over 2,800 ha of residential land in the country, for example, 1,100 ha in Dublin and 620 ha in Cork. These are two of the biggest problem areas for the housing crisis. If NAMA built social and affordable houses on those hectares of land in Dublin, for example, with 1,100 ha at, say, 50 houses per hectare, it could house 55,000 people. The brief of NAMA is run along profit lines, bailing out developers and getting loans repaid for the State. However, if its brief was changed, it has enough land already zoned and, if emergency legislation was introduced, we could build houses quite quickly on it.

The other issue is the hoarding of land which NAMA has been involved in. It is not just me saying it. The Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, has said it in replies to parliamentary questions. It was not until 2014 that NAMA started releasing land for housing. Meanwhile, the housing crisis was building up and NAMA had all this land. It is, therefore, about time that there was an honest discussion about the role the previous and current Governments, in setting up NAMA, have played in allowing housing to become very scarce. For example, in a housing forum last month, NAMA said it had sold enough land for 20,500 units since 2014 "in the most sought-after areas of the capital, the commuter counties of Wicklow, Kildare, Meath and Louth and the cities of Cork, Limerick and Galway". At the height of the housing crisis and in the areas where the crisis is worse, NAMA has sold enough land for those units. By the way, only 1,100 units have been built on that land, indicating developers have been hoarding land while waiting for house prices and profits to rise.

That is the key problem. The private sector is in control of housing in this country and it is being facilitated by NAMA as it is currently set up. I would argue NAMA encourages developers to hoard land and it let a housing shortage develop. I do not have time to give all the quotes. However, for example, a report on a freedom of information request in The Irish Independentlast month shows that the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, wrote to NAMA saying it must bring land to market more quickly to stop developers hoarding sites. He went on to say that NAMA was contributing to the problem. Why was that decision taken when even the Minister himself had to intervene?

On the social housing spend to date and that projected in the NAMA wind-up, NAMA brags about the €260 million it contributed to social housing but it had a turnover of €34 billion. That is the problem; it is so minuscule. Why has so little been spent on new social housing? I know NAMA's primary aim is financial return. There seems to be no social element to NAMA whatsoever. Is NAMA making the decision that there is not much of a social element or is it the Government ordering it? We need to know that. Of the remaining money NAMA has, I think it has €3 billion in cash at the moment, or it had recently. Will the witnesses clarify the position? If that was even used now, at this very late stage, for affordable and social housing, it would make a huge in-road into the problem.

The next question is about NAMA's connection to vulture funds. Today, the NAMA representatives denied that the agency sold 90% of its stock to vulture funds. I am not talking about housing alone. If we include land and all of the loans, then 90% was sold to vulture funds, as far as I can see.

The NAMA representatives have also said that the existing tenancy arrangements tend not to be impacted. I offer an example of an apartment block in Clontarf that NAMA sold to Grant Thornton, which was acting as receiver. The receiver immediately went about imposing a 25% rent increase on the tenants last year. The tenants challenged this at the Private Residential Tenancies Board and have been doing so ever since. Do the NAMA representatives not believe the agency should have some kind of conscience about who it sells to and what lease arrangements are going to be put in place? Does NAMA have any policy of maintaining affordable rents when it sells on apartment complexes or houses? Some of these apartments are still empty because, it would seem, they were being held on to. Apparently, part of the reason is that the loans on the apartments are in the process of being sold to a vulture fund, Promontoria (Arrow), as part of NAMA's Project Arrow deal. The units in question are in Bay Apartments in Clontarf. No one living in those apartments was informed by NAMA that they had been sold on or that the tenants now had a new landlord. The first residents heard about it was on 28 April, when they got a letter telling them about it and asking for information on the lease arrangements they had in place, etc.

One would have thought NAMA should not be contributing to rent increases, but by selling to vulture funds that is inevitable. Most of these vulture funds pay no tax whatsoever in this country. Apparently, one of them paid €250 tax in 2014 despite holding over €500 million in assets. The fund in question is Beltany Property Finance, which is related to Goldman Sachs.

The last question relates to write-downs to developers. They impact on the money available to use for social and affordable housing. The Anti-Austerity Alliance tabled a parliamentary question on 14 April. As of 31 March, 442 of NAMA's original 779 debtor connections had exited the NAMA process. These 442 debtors owed €18.5 billion but they only paid €9.6 billion, or half of it. Only 44 debtors have paid their debts in full to NAMA, which means that between them almost 400 debtors have effectively had an €8.9 billion write-off of debt from NAMA, with an average write-off of €24 million per developer. Do the NAMA representatives believe that it is acceptable, when people are struggling with mortgages, for many of these developers to have profited handsomely from these deals or that they should be let off so easily? It seems only one in 20 NAMA developers have paid their debts in full. It is great to hear that NAMA is going to meet its targets ahead of time, but do the agency representatives not believe there has been undue haste in getting rid of assets and lands with no care as to who they are going to?