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

I do not want to assert the dominance of ideology for the sake of it because this crisis is too serious but is it seriously a coincidence that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael refuse to support inserting the right to housing in the Constitution when 84% of people in a randomly selected Constitutional Convention said we should insert the right, when all of the housing NGOs say we should assert this right, and when parties ranging from Sinn Féin to Independents to Solidarity-People Before Profit, the Labour Party, the Green Party and the Social Democrats all say this would be a good idea? Is it a coincidence that Fianna Fáil decided to opt out of the right to housing provision in the European Social Charter? Is it a coincidence that when the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act was being debated and we pointed out to the Government the loopholes that would be exploited by the landlords and which the Government is finally acknowledging, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael resisted our amendments on those things and our attempts a year ago to close them down?

This has consequences. In my area, the case of the residents of St. Helen's Court is before the RTB. A vulture fund called Apollo Global Management is evicting these residents because it tried to get a 60% rent increase, felt it could not get away with it and came back a couple of months later saying it needed to carry out substantial refurbishments and that the residents needed to get out. Robin Hill apartments were in the hands of NAMA. These 20 or so apartments were sitting empty for the past four or five years. NAMA refused to sell them to the council and now the people who own those apartments, our friend Cerberus, which the Department of Finance met along with holding 60 other meetings with vulture funds and which was invited to buy this property, is evicting people and because it cannot increase the rent, it is adding over €100 and, in some cases, €200 in additional charges per month for heating and hot water which never existed previously. We pointed out all these loopholes to the Government. These people will be evicted so already the Government's ideology has got in the way of preventing these things from happening. There is no explanation other than ideology.

This Bill is very clear. It is about re-balancing the common good provisions and strengthening them over the rights of private property specifically in respect of the right to housing, but the Government resists. Why? It has not given an explanation other than to say it needs to consider it. The Constitutional Convention made its recommendations in 2014. The Government has had three years to consider it. There have been multiple papers on this, and there have been conferences and recommendations. It has been done across the world but the Government still resists it. Why? There can be no other explanation other than it is because the Government's ideological default position is to defend the landlords and the vulture funds. What is it going to do about the fact that Cairn Homes has 20% of zoned building land? We could build 12,000 units on that land but we are not going to do so because Cairn Homes, a private, for-profit entity, only wants to build 300 units because it is more profitable to do it that way. I say that the State should go in, take that land and build the houses we need. What will Cairn Homes do if we try to do that? It will scream that we are interfering with its private property rights but to hell with its private property rights. The right to housing for the citizens in homeless accommodation comes first. That is what we are saying and we want the Government to agree with and act on that, build the public housing, stop the evictions and profiteering by landlords and vulture funds, get the land that is being hoarded by these people and use it to provide housing for our citizens. The Minister knows damn well what this is about. We need that action because Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have dragged their heels at every single point of this crisis.

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