Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are up against time here. We are due to conclude our deliberations in 15 minutes. I hope we can dispose of the section. This section involves an extension of the help-to-buy scheme. I will not revisit it, but there has been a debate on the scheme, its impact in pushing up house prices and the desperation of people out there who will grab with both hands anything to help them to avoid being locked out of housing. In July, Mazars was commissioned by the Department of Finance to complete a review of the scheme. Mazars report contained a number of findings, but none of them is reflected in the Finance Bill. Why is that? This is a very expensive measure. It has cost €603 million. I would argue that this measure is a testament to the Government's failure to deal with the housing crisis. It is a man-made disaster and emergency because policies have allowed house prices to increase dramatically. The Finance Bill will lead to house prices increasing further. If the matter was not so serious, we could laugh about it. However, it is very serious. Many people are locked out of the market and others can no longer dream of owning their own homes. House prices have continued to spiral out of the reach of ordinary workers. As a result, drastic measures have been introduced in the last number of years to provide taxpayers' money to help people, and even with that, there is still a sense of hopelessness there. One of the things that has been mentioned by the Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO, is that this will push up house prices. The Mazars report states very clearly that there is a dead weight - I hate that term - which means that the majority of the money we are spending, which is the equivalent of €200 million per annum, is going to people who do not need it to purchase their own homes. That is bizarre.

The Minister challenged me earlier on about where the money would come from. Why are we providing €100 million to people the Department's independent report says do not need this money to fulfil the policy objective of being able to get a mortgage for their own home? That is going to increase. The report called on the Minister to increase the loan-to-value ratio, but he has not done so. It also called for a number of other measures, which do not appear to have been taken in the Bill. I do not know whether or not this is an ideological issue.

The Government does not know what to do in respect of housing. Everything spirals in the wrong direction, so all the Government can try to do is to provide money to taxpayers to be able to get them onto the housing ladder, despite the fact that the majority of that money is not going to taxpayers who actually need it to get onto the property ladder. Those are not my words; they are the words of the independent report. The report also states that the relief is availed of, on average, by households in higher earnings brackets. The report makes a number of recommendations, including that the loan to value should be increased to 80% from the current 70%. There are serious issues with the scheme. It is a pity that the question was not asked a few years ago when the scheme was introduced. Where is the measurement? When the Government introduces Finance Bills and we discuss them, in some cases we are trying to provide support and in others we are trying to raise revenue.

Some of it is trying to spur on activity and lead to behavioural changes.

How high will the Minister allow house prices to go? I appreciate he has only a number of weeks left in his position assuming his plans work out, but how far will prices have to rise before the penny drops with him that he has done something wrong here? He has been sitting at the Cabinet table for whatever period and he has allowed house prices to increase to eye-watering levels. He has allowed the Celtic tiger peaks, which we thought we would never again see, to be surpassed in 2022. Rents in this city amount to more than €2,000 and 4,000 children will go to sleep tonight in emergency accommodation, and that is not even the biggest issue. The scars, the effects and the trauma those families are going through and will carry with them are real and tangible.

This is a man-made problem, and I put it to the Minister, although it is not personal, that he is at the helm of creating this crisis in housing. The section before us is a testament to his failure to get housing under control and to the fact the Government continues to miss the targets, which are abysmally low. All that, along with rolling out the red carpet to investors and vulture funds, which are pushing up house prices for ordinary families, has come together to create this situation that is a nightmare and catastrophe for ordinary people who are trying to own or rent their own home, or for people who just want a safe roof over their head. The Government is about to see something that is far bigger than housing because this is going to impact across the spectrum, such as on education and health. What is happening is an unmitigated disaster that is a testament to the Government's policies.

It has ignored the expert advice, but it has been doing that for years. Where is this going to end? The Minister cannot just come to this committee every year with policies that push up prices. It is not just us in the Opposition pointing this out; some of the most senior officials from the Minister's Department have indicated that these policies will push up house prices. The defective concrete products levy will push up house prices, as will the shared equity scheme and the help-to-buy scheme, as the Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO, has predicted. The Minister cannot just ignore that and say we need to give taxpayers' money to people who do not need it to purchase their own homes.

If I came before the finance committee and told people, as the Mazars report suggests, that €100 million, or 53.3% of this support, will go to people who do not need it to own their own home, I would expect my colleagues in the committee to run me out of here, but the Minister does this every year. That is €100 million of taxpayer expenditure while, at the same time, so many areas are starved of necessary resources. Indeed, it would be far better to put that money into building homes at affordable prices. It is so frustrating that this is the case.