Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for that. The people occupying Apollo House today are illustrating the empty buildings owned by NAMA, owned by people of this country, and by taking it over they are showing how it can be put to use for ordinary people. The many prominent activists, people from the Irish Housing Network, the Home Sweet Home campaign, the Simon Community and many trade unionists and musicians who have come together there, are teaching the Government and the Dáil a lesson about what could be done to deal with our housing and homelessness crisis if there was not a precedent put on the right to profit of landlords of the massive resources that exist in this State and among people in this country. I encourage people to go down to support them, I encourage Deputies to go down to visit them but, most importantly, I encourage ordinary people to get involved and to volunteer their services, as has been happening, to provide practical assistance to those who are experiencing the housing crisis.

This amendment is very relevant because it relates to the question of supply. The Government argument regarding the previous group of amendments dealing with rent control and the housing crisis in general is to raise the question of supply. We need to have a balance between tenants and landlords and between prospective home owners, workers in reality, and developers in order to incentivise the provision of supply. This amendment proposes that there would be a report on why supply is not being delivered. For example, 27,000 planning permissions have been granted in Dublin but why are only 4,400 currently being used by developers? That question and a report on that would get to the heart of why we have the crisis in this State. Development is not taking place because of the search and the drive for the maximisation of profit. Mr. Brendan McDonagh, the chief executive officer of NAMA, who is at the top of the organisation that controls Apollo House said: "Many developers are "not satisfied" with a €20,000 profit on a €300,000 home. They would rather wait until prices rose to a point at which a €50,000 profit was possible." He explained to the housing committee that "if sales prices went up by 5%, the profit would increase to €30,000. If it went up to 10%, the profit would increase to €40,000. That is the dynamic of the market."

That is the dynamic of the market of which the Government is in favour. It is the dynamic that the Minister, Deputy Noonan, made explicitly clear in his budget and the first-time buyer's proposals, which were about increasing profits for developers and trying to incentivise them further. What we are witnessing is not an absence of land or suitable homes or workers to build homes where they do not exist, but a strike of capital. Greedy developers and private investors have deliberately created a housing shortage in order to drive prices up and up. The Government's response to that is to assist them in driving prices up and up in order to assist in the provision of maximisation of super profits for them. They are holding everybody to ransom by demanding a host of new tax breaks and incentives in order to incentivise them to start building houses now as opposed to in a few years time when another 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 people will have become homeless. Others may never build and are simply hoarding land and watching while prices rise. For example, last December, Cairn Homes bought up over 6,000 sites in north Dublin for €19,000 each. Equivalent sites are now selling for €100,000, adding €81,000 straight onto the price of each house, which means that Cairn Homes and its backer, the US vulture fund, Lone Star, could make a profit of almost €0.5 billion just by selling the sites. This is pointing towards a major reason for the housing crisis and the lack of supply of homes. It relates to their wish to maximise profit and the Government's approach is to facilitate that. We are looking for a report into this so that we can have the facts which we think will be very damning in terms of the free market system and a reliance on that system to provide homes for people in this country.

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