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

I thank the Minister and his officials. One narrative I often identify with the Minister and his Fine Gael predecessors is that he is prudent and pragmatic whereas some of us on the left are reckless and profligate. I put it to the Minister that the opposite is true. I would like him to answer questions in two particular areas where I think he is being reckless, profligate, and wasting and planning to waste large sums of public money that could be far better spent solving some of the very serious problems facing this country.

Let us start with housing, the biggest problem facing us. There is a social crisis engulfing the country and the ESRI is the latest to state that this is going to get worse, not better, and this is after seven years of a Fine Gael Government. Aside from this crisis, however, I put it to the Minister that the Government's Rebuilding Ireland plan is proposing to waste enormous sums of money in a very profligate way. We have been saying this for years but it has been more or less confirmed in the spending review for 2018 from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. This sets out the Rebuilding Ireland targets and points out that out of 137,000 social housing units, only 33,000 will come under build, a further 6,000 under acquisition, and the rest will come under leasing, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and the housing assistance payment, HAP, all of which will be paid out of current expenditure. Just under 100,000 of these proposed units will come under ongoing current expenditure that is going to continue to increase as opposed to carrying out construction and acquisition which, as the report points out, leads to current expenditure decreasing over time. There may be a greater capital cost up front but, over time, the ongoing cost to the Exchequer will reduce.

Why is the Minister doing this profligate and reckless kind of spending which will create a massive hole in the public finances in the future? Picking up the Minister's point about inflation, surely this spending will also fuel such inflation? He is proposing a social housing provision model in which we will have no control over the costs of the delivery of that housing or over the property prices and rents that will be charged by the private sector. We can see that rents are spiralling as the private sector manipulates the market. Is this not a guarantee for massive inflation in the housing sector and a repeat of all the mistakes of the past?

The second matter on which I ask the Minister to respond is tax reliefs where, again, he is being absolutely profligate. There is no prudence whatever in the massive outflow of tax expenditures, reliefs and allowances, which are not being monitored or reviewed but which are being abused. I take the most obvious example, which is linked to housing. I have asked on successive occasions about section 110 relief which, so the public knows, means people who bought into Irish property and retain their investment for seven years will pay no capital gains tax or tax on rental income.