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

I thank the Minister for his illuminating responses so far.

I do not want to labour the past history too much except in so far as it is actually relevant to what we do from here, but one of the things that there seems to be across the board recognition of, certainly on this committee, is that we have had a dangerously low level of capital and infrastructure development investment for some time. That is manifest in the housing crisis, the water infrastructure crisis, investment in health, education and a whole number of other areas which could really do with significant investment. The lack of that investment in the housing area has produced the "supply problem", as it is referred to, because we did not invest, do not have a stock and prices are up. I would like to point out that the reason that we did not have that investment was because of the fiscal straitjacket. Those were rules which were imposed which we agreed to. Even now, we are still grappling with that. There is now a consensus emerging that we should question the fiscal straitjacket, at least with regard to capital investment. Is it not the case that we are paying - whatever about the debates on current spending - a bitter price for the fiscal straitjacket imposed by the troika and agreed to by both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil before it? It produced dangerous imbalances in the economy, never mind the human suffering in the area of housing and the health service from the collapse in investment in those areas.

Is it not time to admit that the EU fiscal rules, at least on capital investment and expenditure, were wrong? They were short-sighted rules and did not understand that counter-cyclical investment and expenditure are needed, and one does not even have to be a Marxist to think that. It is a matter I have heard the Minister talk about more recently, but there was none of that when we needed it most and we are paying a very bitter price for it. I am interested to hear the Minister's comments on that. It is not just a past tense thing, because for those years, we paid out €8 billion in interest on an odious debt that was imposed on us, which is broadly comparable to the collapse of capital investment. That was the capital investment fund, but it was going out. It is still going out. Next year, €6 billion will go out in interest, there will be about €6 billion in the two years after that, and it goes on for quite some time. That is money that could be going into the capital investment deficit and the infrastructure deficit. We all acknowledge that is the case but Europe is imposing a straitjacket and we are agreeing to that straitjacket. Even now, despite the apparent consensus on the problem that this presents for us, I do not really sense any fight with Europe about this. Maybe the Minister could tell me differently, that we are fighting the good fight in Europe to change these crazy rules which are starving us of the housing investment, infrastructure investment and so on that we need.

Housing has been mentioned on a number of occasions. The Minister said it is a matter of supply. I agree and just gave my analysis of why we have a supply problem. Is it just a matter of supply, or is it also the type of supply? That is to say the balance of public, not for profit housing compared to an overwhelmingly privately controlled property market and development land. Would the Minister not agree that that balance is all wrong? Whereas housing output in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s would have been from the State directly providing a much higher proportion, 30% to 40% at times, now it is down to abysmally low levels of direct output by the State of not-for-profit housing, whereas the vast bulk of housing output now is from the private sector. That creates the imbalance and problems of unaffordable prices. Unless we increase the supply of not-for-profit, directly-provided State housing, that balance will never be corrected. I would like the Minister to comment on that.

There is a section in the stability programme about NAMA where the Minister says that its debt and bonds are to be redeemed by the end of 2017. Had the Minister not accelerated the redemption of those bonds and used the money for investment in infrastructure and housing, we might have had more for that. I think it was a mistake for the Minister to accelerate that process to the extent that he did. I ask him to talk about what will happen after the redemption. Presumably we are into the black in NAMA in financial terms, once we have redeemed the debt. Do we know exactly what assets are left, what they are worth, what they could be used for and how much profit is projected? We need more detail on all of this. How much of the profit generated by NAMA will go to private bodies? NAMA is often referred to as a public body but, of course, it is not a public body. It is 51% privately owned. We do not even know who some of the private owners are, incredibly. They are undisclosed investors. How much of the profit of NAMA will go to the 51% that is privately owned?

On the revenue side, does the Minister find it concerning or think it is an issue for us to consider from a budgetary point of view that, while profits have gone up pretty consistently for the last number of years - the witnesses could tell us what the latest available figures are but I think pre-tax profits were about €95 billion-----