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

Quite genuinely, I am long since past just wanting solutions for people who are in those situations, experiencing the trauma and hardship I have described. I could go on listing the examples I am dealing with now for many hours. The list of equally horrendous cases is endless. The misery is endless. Notwithstanding political debate and all that, I just want to see solutions because this has got worse during the time I have been in this House since 2011.

Like Deputy Doherty, I genuinely do not want to be saying "I told you so". I really do not because the situation is too serious for that kind of nonsense. On the other hand, it is difficult not to be incredibly frustrated and angry when it was obvious at the time that decisions being made would have this consequence. We were saying this. It was not rocket science to see that this policy was going to have such an effect.

Deputy Durkan and the Minister, to some degree, have tried to justify all that on the grounds that we had no choice due to the deficit and the borrowing we had to do, and the conditions attached to that borrowing. Even if they want to present that as a justification for what happened, surely the beginning of wisdom is to say the troika was wrong on that front. Some recognition is becoming apparent, at European level, that the troika was wrong. Interestingly, things like the fiscal rules on state aid have all disappeared. All the things we were told were completely sacrosanct, such as that we must work within these strictures, that we could not have state aid or that we could not distort the market, are on hold now.

We realised, when we were faced with an emergency around the pandemic, all of those rules were a straitjacket which had to be discarded if we were to meet the challenge. I would be surprised if they came back any time soon because we have surely learned some lessons, surely. One even hears the IMF and all these people talking - it is ironic because I sat at those meetings with the troika when it was shoving this medicine-poison down our throat - now and often producing reports saying we really want to start investing in housing when I am thinking some of its policies are the reason we are in this mess now. It realises, to some degree, this was all a big mistake and it is beginning to shift. It does not openly admit it made a big mistake but one can see the goalposts are shifting because the policies failed disastrously. That is why the beginning of wisdom would be, at least, to say that was a mistake.

The Minister said we did not have the money. We had the money because we paid for it. We borrowed the money to take that property into State control. We had the borrowed money but we then decided to sell it back which was a big mistake and to incentivise investors with tax breaks which is what this amendment is about. It was a policy. To be honest, we all know there was another element to that, and Mr. Michael Noonan was very clear at the time, in that we needed to refloat the property market to improve the asset position of the banks because property prices collapsing to the degree to which they did was seen as a major problem for the banks. We had to refloat the property market. The policy was directed towards that end and it was a big, disastrous mistake.

It was a conscious decision to drive up property prices and incentivise investors to come in to take control of the housing sector. I remember the language at the time. Michael Noonan said we were going to professionalise the rental sector. He said it would be much better with these guys who were professional landlords and much better than the mama and papa and ad hoc landlords. We were to have a professional rental sector. It was going to be utopia with these people coming in. That was said at the time and it was so, so wrong.

Directly related to that was the decision, which I remember trying to highlight and even explain to journalists in 2011 who at that stage had never heard of the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, housing assistance payments, HAP, or leasing, to stop completely the capital investment programme in social housing and to outsource the provision of social housing to these entities. That was the thinking. We were not to build our own social housing but get these professional investors in who would take control of the NAMA portfolio, build all these apartments and lease them back to the State to create a professional rental sector which would replace the old-fashioned construction of social housing with HAP, RAS and leasing stuff. That was the plan. The plan happened and it was an unmitigated disaster.

I want solutions, but I know the Government will not contemplate them and will think it is off the wall even to do this because lefties are always talking off the wall. However, just for a moment, people might ponder the fact that on this issue, if not on anything else, we had a point way back then when we said this would be a big mistake and a disaster. The Government might just ponder the possibility that on this issue, if not on any other, we might have a point. If we want to help the families I talked about, every single thing that has been built by or for these entities should be taken into our hands. It was a mistake to give it to them and should be taken back.

The proposal is radical but, interestingly, when Berlin had a referendum on expropriating the vulture funds, the majority of people supported it because they realised how damaging these people were. The language and thought are radical but it makes sense. The funds should be expropriated because I do not see the point of what one sees going along the N11 - I am sure this is true when one goes out to where Deputy Durkan lives or out the Minister's direction - with all of these apartment complexes being built of which we are getting 10%. The rest of them will be rented for €2,500 per month or we might lease a few extra, paying them an absolute fortune. They are making extraordinary profits and the apartments are totally unaffordable. It would be better if we had the apartments and charged affordable rents.

Would it cost a lot? Yes, it would. Would it, in the long term, be better value for the State and taxpayer and solve a problem right here and now for the people I was describing and the many others like them? The answer is yes. The Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, report argued this. It is not just me. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform said ending up having to pay all of that money in RAS, HAPs and leasing would cost us billions more in the end. It is a false economy to say we cannot afford to do this now because it is just too much when, in reality, we will end up paying a hell of a lot more down the line as well as the social and personal misery and hardship if we do not do it. I put that to the Minister.

If the Minister has a better solution I would like to hear it so that when the people I am talking about come into my office next week, I can tell them not to worry and they do not need to start crying, because I have a solution to give them. If the Minister has the answer, that is what I want. I want to be able to give that woman an answer and say that her kids do not have to cry and her child does not have to go through this. I want to tell her I have asked the Minister how he will solve this and he has given me the answer. If the Minister does not agree with our thoughts, I ask him to tell me what I will say to these people. The question is not rhetorical because they want to hear a solution. I and everybody affected by this housing crisis wants to hear it. What do we say to people in that situation? I will finish on this. I apologise, Acting Chairman, but this is the biggest issue in the whole country. Everybody knows it. What do I say?

Across the road from my office where these families are coming in, there is a multi-unit apartment complex owned by one of these investors. The investors bought it from a receiver when a landlord went bust. They tried four times to mass-evict everybody and eventually drove most of the tenants out. A few of them are left who are resisting. We are trying to get the local council to buy the complex. I do not know how many times I have raised it with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and negotiations are finally going on. While I am talking to those people, week in and week out, 17 apartments in that complex sit empty. Some 15 of them have been empty for two and a half years. They are perfectly refurbished and absolutely livable.

Families in my office right across the road are bawling crying and saying they have nowhere to go and do not know what they will do when right across the road, an investor is sitting on an appreciating asset that is empty and on which they will not pay tax on the capital gains they will make on it. It is more profitable for that company to sit on the empty property than for the woman and her child to be put in it. Is it not disgusting that that can happen? I think it is disgusting.