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

I want to ask about two issues regarding Davos, one of which the Taoiseach addressed and the second he did not. I want to clarify that the Taoiseach did not talk about it when he should have. On the matter he talked about, fairly astonishingly, one of the big issues discussed at Davos was inequality and the need to address it. I will briefly pass over the enormous irony of some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people arriving in the Swiss Alps in helicopters and private jets to discuss what we should do about inequality, when most of them are the embodiment of the gross inequality that exists in the world. There is a certain irony in all of that. I wonder what the Taoiseach had to say on the issue of tackling inequality and what the Taoiseach came back with in terms of what will be done in this country to tackle the growing and - frankly - shocking inequality developing in Irish society.

This is perhaps best evidenced by the absolute scandal referred to earlier, which I have raised many times over the past two years, of the housing and homelessness emergency that sees families and children in desperate situations of homelessness and insecurity, with all that goes with it. It is an extraordinary irony that the Government is putting through a Children First Bill this week. One of the first things the Children First guidelines set out is that it is a form of abuse to neglect a child and that those guilty of the neglect, which is a form of abuse, should be accountable for that abuse. It will be interesting to see whether the guidelines set this down legally in the legislation. Could there be anything more abusive and a better example of the neglect of the State and of its obligations to children than to have those children homeless and living in the most inappropriate situations imaginable in hostels on the other side of the city with chronic drug and alcohol users and on housing lists for 15 years while being buffeted from one place to another with no security? Let us imagine what this does to the welfare, psychology and emotional balance of a child going from an infant to an older teenager not knowing whether they have a secure roof over their heads. Let us imagine what that does to them in terms of a sense of place in society. I wonder what was said as the wealthy, powerful and privileged discussed at Davos the need to address inequality. What did the Taoiseach say about this inequality? What did he come back with in terms of tackling these gross forms of unacceptable inequality?

I looked at the report card produced by the Children's Rights Alliance for 2014. It gives the Government E-, the second worst grade one can get, for tackling child poverty. Some 20% of children stated last year they go to bed hungry, which is extraordinary in the 21st-century. What is the Government doing about it? In so far as we have some of the world's wealthiest people and the CEOs of some of the world's most profitable companies, which are at the centre of allegations of paying negligible or no tax, was there any suggestion that if these people paid a little bit more tax we might not have the same level of gross inequality and children going to bed hungry? Is that not the obvious conclusion they should have come up with at Davos, which any reasonable person would come up with when looking at this level of inequality in society?

The second question flows from it.

I asked the Taoiseach whether he discussed the issue of property and housing in Davos, because housing and property were at the centre of the global and Irish economic crisis. I have been trying to ring the alarm bells about this since the Government introduced the new property based tax reliefs for property speculation, in the form of real estate investment trusts, two years ago. I warned the Taoiseach then that this could lead to a further speculative property bubble, but that was totally pooh-poohed by him and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, although it is now becoming evident. Under the Fianna Fáil Administration, the Taoiseach suggested the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton had prophetic powers when it came to the property bubble, but strangely, this did not seem to stop Fine Gael councillors supporting planning permission for insane developments all over the country, which helped pump up property prices. However, we will set that aside here.

Is the Taoiseach aware there is a serious danger now of another property bubble and what is he going to do to address this? The Taoiseach has been travelling around the world seeking investment and has visited places like Davos, and New York for St. Patrick's Day where he said to investors that if one was to build a few thousand houses in Dublin, one would have them sold within a week. In other words, he was encouraging people to speculate in property. This is extraordinary, given the role property speculation has played in our economic downfall. Did the Taoiseach go to Davos encouraging this sort of speculative investment in property in Dublin? Does he realise that in so far as the property bubble and the dramatic increase in rents and property values is happening, when he talks about the need to address the supply issue he seems to suggest this will be dealt with by investment in this area expanding supply?

I put it to the Taoiseach that this shows the poverty of analysis in terms of what happened in the crash we have just been through. We had from 70,000 to 90,000 houses built a year, but that did not stop a bubble developing. Property prices do not stop spiralling out of control just because private investors move into the area of housing and property. We saw the biggest surge of investment in property during the Celtic tiger period and that did not reduce property values, but led to a spiralling out of control of property values. Is there not something fundamentally wrong with the assumption the Taoiseach seems to be relying on - that to resolve the problem, all we need is people to move in and invest in this area? Is it not obvious that people who invest in property invest for profit, not to house the people on the housing list? They will not invest to build housing for people on the housing list and will not be interested in low cost or affordable housing because they cannot make as much money from that.

We need affordable housing in order to regulate the overall market. Is there any awareness on the part of the Taoiseach in his analysis of this situation that this is what we need? We need public investment in affordable housing, both to house the people on the lists and to regulate the housing market so as to prevent a further property bubble. Sadly, the Taoiseach seems to be touting speculation in Irish property internationally and I find that extraordinary.

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