Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What concerns me here is that more than 80% of them finished up in the hands of institutional investors. I am aware that Ms Deering made the case earlier that she was trying to help that sector as well. However, are we sure that sector was really struggling to get finance? For example, if a constituent went to the local authority tomorrow to get money under the local authority loan scheme or, previously, the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme, two letters from private financial institutions would have to be produced stating he or she could not get a loan. There would also be other rigorous checks. Ms Deering clarified that the developers who finished up with 80% of the public money did not have to produce any of that documentation. Does she not find that odd? She mentioned that her organisation did not want to put the applicants through the rigorous process of going around the houses looking for money before coming back to it, but that does not take long. One can get the information from a bank or other financial institution in a day. If a developer or builder presents balanced books to a bank or financial institution and shows evidence of the asset, secured land, planning permission and a preliminary design that has been done, he or she will get a fairly quick answer within a week; it does not take months.

A weakness in the momentum fund and the overall scheme is that critical check is not in place. What happened is simply that, in the case of the fund, more than 80% of it ended up funding apartments in Dublin that finished up in the hands of private developers charging a rent of €3,100 per month. That is crazy money by comparison with rents in other European cities. Before the crash, we finished up with the most expensive site in the world in Ballsbridge. We all remember that and what happened. Some of the people involved wound up in America. We remember the madness of all that. Are we not driving ourselves into a crazy situation again using taxpayers’ money to build apartments that are to be rented out for completely crazy prices from the point of view of Joe Public and citizens? If people rent these apartments, they will never be able to save to buy a home and they will end up as pensioners in them. I realise this is not for Ms Deering to figure out but policymakers must figure out how they will fund the system when these people reach pension age. What kind of pension or wage will someone need to pay €700 or €800 per week in rent?

Based on the figures given, I am more concerned than I was after reading all this material yesterday. We need to help small builders to provide affordable homes. I contend that it does not cost €400,000 to build or produce a home, regardless of the land cost and anything else. There are things HBFI cannot do about the land costs that the Oireachtas should be doing, but I would like to go a lot further. We have not acted on the Kenny report of the 1970s. There are things we can do regarding vacant sites, CPOs, etc. I just think we are finishing up in a worse situation than we were in given where things are heading. I know people on relatively good incomes who are paying €1,600 per month in rent. They are absolutely crucified. They are young couples who will never be able to buy.

I will allow in the second batch of speakers. There are a few members who have not shown up yet. I will allow each member who indicates a desire to contribute to do so. However, they should bear in mind that if some of the others arrive, I will have to allow them their ten minutes. The best thing to do is to give each member who indicates five minutes to contribute, and I will do so in the order in which members indicate. We will then go around the houses again. The first person to indicate is Deputy Munster, who has five minutes.