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

I am glad the Tánaiste mentioned housing, particularly social housing. As I have said a number of times in recent weeks, a major national demonstration will take place on 7 April to demand precisely that the Government breaks from its current reliance on the private sector, private developers and landlords to deal with the housing emergency and that the State, through the local authorities, builds the council houses we need. In that context, we were provided with a perfect instance on Sunday in an article in The Sunday Business Post that shocked even me, and it takes a fair bit to shock me, concerning Richard Barrett, a developer, formerly of Treasury Holdings, whose loans the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, had to buy out for €1 billion with public money. He is now boasting that he will be the biggest provider of social housing outside the State as part of the Rebuilding Ireland plan. In what I understand were arrangements negotiated with the Minister, Deputy Murphy's Department, Mr. Barrett said he was very pleased with the generosity of the Minister in terms of his time with respect to Bartra Capital, which is financed by Mr. Barrett and international investors, which will provide 1,200 social housing units on a long-term lease basis for 25 years at 95% of market rents.

Mr. Barrett and his investors are very pleased with the deal because they will make an absolute killing out of it. The cost of 1,200 units at current rents nationally will work out at approximately €400,000 per unit for the State for those 25 years, not taking into account likely rent increases. If we multiply that by 1,200, we are talking about in excess of a €400 million cost to the State. The fact that most of them will be built in areas such as Dublin and the urban centres means that the cost will be much higher. Where average rents are higher, we are talking almost certainly in excess of €500 million for 1,200 units. Mr. Barrett, Bartra Capital and Mr. Barrett's property speculator investor friends will make an absolute killing when the State could directly build those houses for a fraction of the cost. At the end of the process the State would own them. We would generate rental revenue, which would come back to the State instead of hundreds of millions of euro going out of the State to Mr. Barrett's friends. When we consider that under Rebuilding Ireland, as well as Bartra Capital, 10,000 of the Minister, Deputy Murphy's planned 50,000 units will be leased in this manner, we are looking at a bill of billions of euro going to private developers to benefit from the social housing emergency they helped to create. How can Tánaiste possibly justify that? It is obscene.

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