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

I asked on Committee Stage and I did not get an answer. The only answer I can surmise from this is that back in 2011, 2012 or whenever, the Government decided it wanted to get these big property investors into the Irish property market to inflate the value of property for NAMA to make a profit. The consequence of this for the Government was it would be able to say NAMA had done its job, it had made a profit and the NAMA strategy had been a success. However, the consequence for Irish society has been a massive rental crisis where rents have gone through the roof, property prices are going through the roof and we have an increasing concentration of control over residential property in the hands of a tiny number of these property speculators. It is a deliberate policy, incentivised through this type of measure. I am amazed the Government would want to continue this. Whatever arguments it may feel it had in 2011 or 2012, and I did not agree with it then and I argued against it at the time, why it would consider it acceptable to continue this now is absolutely beyond me. We can see the devastating impact it is having and the totally distorted dysfunctional property sector and rental sector we have in the country. I would love to hear an answer to this. It is an unbelievable scandal when what we should have done is kept these property assets in public ownership, used them for social housing and used the rental revenues to come back to the State to build more social and affordable housing, instead of handing over all of this to flipping property speculators and allowing them massive tax breaks on the rental revenue they get and on the capital gains they will get.

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