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

This amendment is supposed to be an effort to address it. I am pointing out that it does not address it. It repeats the mistakes of the past. Having failed to do what was necessary to deal with the housing crisis, in other words, build council houses or control rents, we are left in the invidious position whereby the only proposal being put before the House is an amendment to give new tax breaks to landlords. Tax breaks to landlords and developers were precisely what caused the economic collapse. That is where we are.

It is difficult for us to know what to do with this. Faced with the emergency that surrounds us, anything that even marginally improves on the disaster surrounding us cannot be opposed. In the medium to long term, however, this compounds the problem because it diverts money from the real solution into tax breaks for landlords. It gives landlords and developers even greater control over the market. We need to move in the opposite direction.

Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this, I suspect, will be the vulture funds that have bought all the NAMA properties. Perhaps the Minister would like to comment on that. It is bad enough that the NAMA properties were not given lock, stock and barrel to the local authorities to provide social housing and instead were sold to the funds at knockdown prices. They have made a killing at the expense of NAMA, which we paid for. Now, they are going to make a killing again by renting those properties back to the State which has only recently sold the properties to them. It is extraordinary. We are going to give tax breaks to the people to whom we sold the properties at knockdown prices. One could not make this stuff up. The Mafia would be greatly impressed at the ingenuity of it. The bottom line is they are going to be vastly enriched by this.

It is difficult to know what to say. If even one extra property were made available to people on the social housing lists, I would welcome it, such is the disaster. It is nauseating in the extreme that to provide the extra social housing that is so desperately needed, these funds have to make a killing. Would it not have been better for us to make the up-front investment in social housing construction? Would it not be better now? That would not be money down a deep, dark hole.

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