Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

A report by the United Nations published one year ago said: "Housing and urban real estate have become the commodity of choice for corporate finance, a safety deposit box for the wealthy, a repository of capital and excess liquidity." That report showed that US $163 trillion is now invested in residential real estate worldwide, which is more than twice the size of the entire gross domestic product of the world. Housing and property is big business and makes big profits, more than ever since the global crash of 2008. It is particularly the case in Ireland. The average yield on Irish property stood at 7.08% in August of 2017, up from 6.54% in 2016 and far, far ahead of the rest of the member states of the European Union.

We are now witnessing the rise of corporate landlordism in Ireland. This is not an uncle or an aunt who has inherited a house, but rather big business entering the market and seeking big profits. NAMA has facilitated it, as can be seen in the case of I-RES REIT. Kennedy Wilson, a huge US corporate landlord, recently purchased the Elysian Towers in Cork. The rise of corporate landlordism is shown in the example of the Leeside apartments in Cork, where a company, Lugus Capital, which is linked to Bain Capital, one of the biggest vulture funds in the world, snapped up apartments in Cork city centre and within days issued notices to quit to residents, who are low income families, many of which have kids and many of which have been resident there for years. That approach is being resisted, but it is clear how the housing needs of the 99% are being subordinated to the capital accumulation of the 1%.

This can also be seen in the approach of Airbnb in this country. Airbnb started life as a small-scale host community, where ordinary people engaged in accommodation sharing. Internationally it is becoming a field for landlords and speculators to intervene to make profits on a major scale. Airbnb was a €15 billion industry by the end of 2016. Ireland is no exception to this. We do not have enough information on the issue because Airbnb does not engage in data sharing, but my sense of it is that Ireland is no exception to the European norm. In every city and town in this country it can be seen that there are more short-term lets on Airbnb than on daft.iefor long-term lets. I understand that an expert group is due to report to the Government on that issue soon. Can the Minister of State tell us exactly when that group will report? I look forward to the debate around that issue.

The State is being rolled back and housing is being privatised under this and previous Governments. In the 1970s one in five houses in this State were social housing. Today, that is less than one in ten. The UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, Ms Leilani Farha has been quoted in this debate. I will quote her again. She said, in the course of her visit to Ireland:

Evictions continue unabated worldwide, particularly because so many people lack security of tenure. Unregulated private actors are filling the void left by Governments that are continuously receding from the housing sector, thereby leaving unchallenged the prevailing paradigm that housing is a commodity rather than a social good. Ireland is in the throes of all of these phenomena.

It could be added that Ireland is in the throes of all of these phenomena in significant measure thanks to the policies of its Government. Ten thousand people are homeless in this State. That is a fraction of the real figure when people who are couch surfing are taken into account; it could be double, treble or quadruple that number. The Government and the Minister have doctored the figures, but it is clear that 10,000 are homeless. At the same time payments are being made to private landlords which will cost the taxpayer €23 billion more over 30 years than would be the case if social houses were built instead. The profits for the investors are locked in, but the young generation are being locked out. This is copperfastened by politics; a Fine Gael led Government, propped up by Fianna Fáil. Both parties are joined at the hip in their support for the market. In Fine Gael some 37% of its parliamentarians are landlords. Some 31% of Fianna Fáil parliamentarians are landlords.

The national coalition on housing and homelessness organised a demonstration which was attended by 10,000 people this year, and it will go to the streets again in the Autumn. Unity is required to fight the housing crisis, but it must be unity in support of public housing on public lands and unity against the market, which has failed the people.

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