Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

There has been widespread media coverage as a result of Deputy Catherine Murphy and I raising with the Taoiseach and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, the recent phenomenon of management companies in new housing estates and the fees demanded by them. Many media commentators have said they were not aware of this new form of rip-off. The words, "scam", "rip-off" and "stealth tax" were correctly and frequently used in recent days with regard to this issue.

The Minister is seeking information but I want two or three very clear statements from the Taoiseach this morning in regard to the policy aspect of the matter. Does he oppose the sneaky underhand privatisation by local authorities through the management company structure of services such as care of public open spaces, public liability insurance, maintenance of the water pipe network and other services, not inside apartment blocks but in housing estates, and the effective imposition of a new local tax on new young home buyers to finance this? In the Taoiseach's estate and in mine and probably in the estates of most Members, those services are provided from our general taxation through the local authorities.

Does the Taoiseach oppose the scam whereby house builders, having made obscene profits already, control the management companies for the first four and five years and drag the very people who made profits for them into the courts to force fees out of them to finance basic maintenance which they were obliged to do by law up until now and are still obliged to do? It is dishonest in the extreme to say people have a choice, as some local authority managers have attempted to say in justification. They do not have a choice any more than a starving person in a queue for food has a choice as to the conditions that will be imposed on him or her. Sharp practice is in operation when, for example, an 18-page contract is being shoved under people's noses when they come to sign for their houses to force them into a management company.

Yesterday. we had the reassuring image of the Minister of State, Deputy Callely, posing like Robert De Niro looming over the mean streets of Dublin assuring us he would help us to plan for Christmas. Admittedly, that was offset by the terrifying image of the Minister for Defence this morning at the controls of an Army helicopter.

See this speech in context