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

The housing and homelessness crisis is the biggest crisis facing this country. The Government never tires of telling us that it is caused by a lack of supply and that we need to consider where that supply should come from. We think the State should provide that supply, but any bloody supply would be pretty helpful at the moment. It is an absolutely disastrous situation. All of these ICAVs, QIFs and REITs, etc., will not deliver a single extra house. The position might get even worse, as Deputy Donnelly has suggested. Money is being forgone in tax to benefit people who are just speculating. That is all they are doing. They are just speculating.

When the Minister of State responded to me earlier, he said we have fundamentally different views about the role of the private sector. I get that, but what exactly is the benefit of this particular private sector involvement? It is not delivering anything. It is not bringing us anything. It is not helping to deal with the housing and rental crisis. It is making it worse. I remember opposing the REITs and ICAVs when they first appeared in 2013. I told the Minister for Finance I could not believe he was introducing these tax incentives. I did not fully understand what they were. I saw them and I asked what they were. It was at a similar late-night session to this one, when we had been debating for hours. I could easily have let it pass because we were all so tired. I asked what the REITs were. I asked whether they would incentivise the kind of speculation that led to the last property bubble. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, said that there would not be a property bubble, but we have a property bubble now.

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