Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I certainly do not support taking houses from tenants but I want to discuss a particular issue. Edmund Honohan attended the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness and what he said was very interesting. We all know how compulsory purchase orders have been used in the case of developing roads and other infrastructure but he put forward an imaginative suggestion that they could be used in the case of NAMA and of vulture funds. He suggested that where houses, with tenants or otherwise, are being sold from under the feet of people, the State should be able to come in and purchase those houses rather than have to add these people to the housing lists and go through the system of rehousing them. It should intervene at the time of the crisis.

We had a presentation on this crisis today in the AV room. The crisis is huge, is escalating and we cannot hide from it. Hundreds of repossession cases per day are lined up for the courts. Legislation in other jurisdictions, in America in particular, ensures the vulture funds and others must take the good with the bad. Interventions are made and properties are bought back from them, despite the fact they bought them at rock down prices in order to make a killing. These other jurisdictions buy these properties back under this kind of legislation. If people are living in them, they can continue as tenants and if not, the properties are provided to people who are homeless.

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