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

One of the central justifications for these extraordinary tax breaks for REITs and vulture funds - the section 110 structure allowing these companies to benefit from it and the REIT tax breaks introduced by various Finance Acts - was encouraging investment in property in Ireland and resuscitating the property sector, presumably to do something basic like provide housing for people. To this day, the Government cannot even tell us how much tax has been foregone via section 110 and will still be foregone in terms of capital gains and rental income under these schemes. Incredibly, ISIF is working with these people who have sucked vast amounts of profits out of the country. What has it delivered in terms of housing? It has delivered nothing. In all of the years in which these things have been in operation, according to the CSO, we have had a 0.4% increase in housing stock and, of course, a disastrous situation in social housing. Can the Minister tell us how many billions we have wasted in foregone tax revenue to get that failed result in terms of a thoroughly dysfunctional housing sector, which is dysfunctional precisely because the Government gave them tax breaks instead of using the State's resources to invest in social housing?

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