Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State has made a great argument for vulture funds and why they were needed and he has taken lines from the hymn book of the former Minister, Deputy Noonan, about the role played by vulture funds and the ecosystem and so on. Many members have a different experience. We should remember that many of the vulture funds in question have no plans to reinvest here and are in it for the short term. A well-known maxim is that when there is blood spilled on the floor, it is time to go in. That is what happened here. The quantum of money we would lose in tax is a scandal, as is the fact this is holding up potential housing development at a time of emergency in that area. However, that should be considered in light of what the funds have been achieving over that period of time. Funds that invested in the period around 2013 will now benefit from the CGT exemption. In 2014, commercial property returns in the State were the highest in the world. There was a return of 40.1% on commercial property in 2014 because in 2012 the economy started to pick up and in 2013, it was already back on a growth trajectory. That is why I say it was close to the bottom of the trough. The Minister of State has said we needed the funds and all the rest and nobody knew what way it was going to go. He should read any academic analysis of the situation such as that of Morgan Kelly or the NAMA report that led to its establishment and which foresaw property prices getting back to a sustainable level within ten years. That was all well signalled and the funds knew that.

We can argue about whether we needed them. I am not sure what benefit they supplied. They snapped up properties from NAMA at rock bottom prices and made massive profits running to billions of euro on them. They paid no taxes on those profits and the Government is now going to facilitate them further in paying no tax on profits. Can the Minister of State tell me or anybody listening to these proceedings why the State needed them? What benefit did they give the State? The only benefit is their shareholders became extremely rich. The companies that serviced the funds' legal structures got quite wealthy. However, the funds did not service the interests of the State. Perhaps the Minister of State will explain how Irish citizens benefitted from vulture funds coming in and buying from the State, through NAMA, at rock bottom prices, flipping those properties within a short period of time for, in some cases, double, triple or quadruple the price for which they bought them and in other cases holding the assets in order that they can leave Ireland without paying tax. How did the State benefit from that?