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

These amendments are well directed. The 10% being charged on some residential property, where it is over nine properties, is completely inadequate to deal with the phenomena of the big property investment vehicles coming in here and bulk buying property. No measure has been taken by the Government to prevent them bulk buying apartments. If the levy is imposed on some parts of the housing sector in terms of homes of ten or more, rather than apartment homes, is the Government concerned these vehicles will simply start to set up entities that will do nine?

I have certainly seen vulture funds behave in that way in my constituency in trying to get around other regulations, including thresholds such as the Tyrrelstown amendment and they have succeeded. If they cannot evict ten tenants, they will evict seven, even though their intention to evict all tenants is clear. However, they do it over a period of time. I do not see why it is not possible for them to do the same, but that is an aside.

These entities are pretty ruthless and profit driven and the last people in whom they have an interest are those who need affordable housing. That is not their interest, at all. They are just here to make money. Indeed, the advertisements on many of their websites to the people who might invest in these entities say they will maximise the value of people's investment. That is how they promote themselves as businesses. They do not say they are trying to do good for housing around the world. They say to people who are thinking of investing that they will maximise the value of their investment.

That is the business they are in and they are not the sort of people on whom we should be relying to resolve a housing crisis, which is about human beings accessing a basic human need. I would exclude them completely from the market. Some 17% certainly goes much further than the Minister is proposing. In some ways, I would be inclined to put it at 90%. I just do not see the value of these people. They should be driven out of the market.

The direction of amendment No. 110 is correct. I highlighted some time ago on Leaders' Questions the issue of hotels being built, while we have a desperate need of housing and a shortage of construction labour. This amendment tries to get at the same issue. The Taoiseach replied that we needed hotels and told me not to counterpose the two. However, there is a shortage of construction labour in this country. If loads of construction workers are building hotels, they are not building houses.

If there is a priority at present, it is to build houses for people to live in, rather than more hotels, which are littering and in some cases destroying this city, because so many of them are being built. They are destroying the city's heritage, as well as directing labour resources which are in short supply and are needed to build homes for people. The objective of these amendments by Deputy Doherty is absolutely right. I am interested to hear whether the Minister really believes the Government's current policies will deter the sort of objectionable activities being conducted by these profit-driven investment vehicles and the damage they are doing.

Does the Minister have measures that prioritise the construction of homes as against less essential construction of the hotel kind? Indeed, is he interested in such measures? I know less about the commercial office sector and whether there is an oversupply. It gets my goat when I see the Seamark Building while travelling on the Merrion Road. I do not know whether the Minister has ever passed it. One of the NAMA developers, Bernard McNamara, built the big blocks beside St. Vincent's University Hospital. They are huge impressive looking buildings. There are about seven or eight of them. At least one, which has been advertised for office space, has been sitting empty for ten years. Do we need those kinds of developments or do we need homes? In some areas, there is clearly an oversupply of office space, such that it cannot be rented. I support the thrust of these amendments and am interested in hearing the Minister's response.