Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

George Osborne's Help to Buy scheme has cost the British taxpayer £12 billion and has led to a serious increase in the price of housing. The Minister is right that a builder cannot build unless he can make ends meet and the project makes a profit. Does the Minister not agree that the biggest problem in Ireland is the land bank accumulation that goes on? It is not the builders that are accumulating land, but a different type of individual. A very small group of people here control most of the development land. Surely the time has come for the State to take an active part in controlling the price of development land.

In his response to Deputy McGrath's question on NAMA and bank sell-offs, the Minister said there was good money coming into the country. I suggest to him that the selling off of big blocks at a price of €100,000 or less per unit will prove problematic.

There are units for which the ordinary individual would have to pay in the region of €230,000 or €240,000. Large investors buying huge numbers of them at a time are getting them for €100,000 or less each. Not only are we selling off valuable assets at a knockdown price, but these people are gaining serious control over the rental market. Never in the history of the State have so few people controlled such a number of units that are available for rent, which is adding to the problem of housing availability and homelessness.

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