Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I have nothing at all. My hands are clean.

I have not had a chance to congratulate my constituency colleague, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, on his appointment and to wish him the very best of luck in his new job. I look forward to working with him, in particular on sites in our constituency such as the Irish Glass Bottle site, RTE and the docklands, where the State has an influence. I echo the words of Councillor Patrick Costello of Dublin City Council who said it is a sad state of affairs when tourists are staying in homes and the people who should be in homes are staying in hotels, hostels and emergency accommodation. There is something very wrong given our homelessness crisis. We are going back to the land hoarding that got us into our housing difficulties. We have to break the landowners' control to solve our housing crisis. There are three measures the Minister should advance which would help us in this regard, first, as we set out in proposed legislation, advance a vacant sites levy to tackle the supply issue. In the last Government's original programme for Government a form of site value tax was proposed but was ditched. It would act as a signal that all land be used efficiently.

I agree with what Deputy O'Sullivan said about needing a mechanism to stop the incentive to hoard land through a rise in profits on land ownership. We introduced that mechanism in 2010 with a supernormal tax of 80% on any profits from rezoning of land. The last Government got rid of it because it was not raising revenue. It was an important signal to the market not to keep investing in hoarding land, that it would not turn a quick buck when it was rezoned. I do not know why that measure was removed. It was a sensible lesson and it applied the Kenny report, going back 40 years but for no reason that I can see the last Government withdrew it. It is legal. It was in operation and while it did not raise revenue it was a signal that landowners could not make money out of hoarding land. We need to go back to that.

Last week, the Select Committee on Budgetary Oversight heard from Andrew McDowell the new vice president of lending in the European Investment Bank. We asked him what more we could do about social housing. He gave a very clear signal that if the Government only did what it says it wants to do, the cost rental model, there is a quantity of money available for lending for that. Unfortunately, he said we do not seem to have a system whereby one can borrow against a future rental income stream, which is sufficiently high to cover that borrowing cost. The beauty of the cost-rental model is that it allows one to raise money on a 20 or 30 year return from what is effectively a market rental system that funds that lending. For those who are unable to afford that rental rate we would have a rent supplement scheme which, instead of going to the private rental sector, would go to that sector, provided for by local authorities or housing associations. I cannot understand why the Government is not doing cost rental. Going for that is my one big recommendation to the Minister as he sets out to develop the Irish Glass Bottle site and other sites because it makes economic sense.

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