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

I believe that when the history books are written, what happened with the property and housing sector in this country after the crash, with the tax set-up and the political decision, as I see it, to invite investment vehicles into the country to "refloat" the Irish property sector, will turn out to be one of the greatest mistakes ever made in this State. It has contributed directly to the housing disaster we now face. It is bad enough that NAMA has got €40 billion in cash for the property it has sold and unloaded so far, mostly to these types of vehicles, from 2012 and 2013 onwards, when it should have used that property portfolio to provide affordable and public housing; what is worse is that we would not be in the mess we are in had it not done so.

To add insult to injury, the investment vehicles are benefiting from all these tax reliefs, whereby they do not pay tax on rental income and do not pay capital gains tax. That is shocking beyond belief. It has contributed directly, not just from the point of view of morals or how shocking it is, to an utterly dysfunctional housing sector and to human misery in the form of the housing crisis. These entities did not come in to create a sustainable housing sector in Ireland. That is not why they came here and it is not what they have done. They came here to make money. That is what they have done, and they will not pay much tax for having done so. I think about how rents have gone up and how the value of property has gone up to a staggering level, all of which these property investment vehicles have benefited from to a staggering degree. Then, to add to that, these real estate investment trusts, real estate funds and so on have benefited from tax breaks.

One thing I have always found particularly unacceptable, from the point of view of a member of the finance committee, is that we do not really know how much revenue is forgone in this regard. For the most part, when there are tax breaks and tax reliefs, we can ask the question how much tax is forgone, as we have done before. The Minister may give us new information, but I think I am right in saying we are not told - or told it cannot be calculated or something - how much tax has been forgone from the tax breaks on these entities' rental revenue and capital gains. It is pretty awful from a budgetary point of view and a finance point of view that we just do not know or are not given the figures or that the amount cannot be calculated, whatever the reason is. Therefore, to look into these figures, as these amendments propose to do, and assess their impact on the housing market and price dynamics is the very least we can do in order that we can have an informed debate on the advantages these entities enjoy. Obviously, the Government will say that these arrangements are beneficial, that we need these property investors and that somehow they are contributing, although it is totally lost on me how they are contributing in any shape or form to a sustainable housing sector. Maybe the Minister will be able change my mind. I doubt it. At the very least, we need to look into and scrutinise these matters.