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

I thank everybody who contributed to the debate, particularly those who are supporting the motion. Earlier, I should have thanked Mr. Mel Reynolds and Ms Orla Hegarty for the briefing they gave us. Many of the facts and some of the ideas in the motion came from them and the Government should start listening to them.

To be honest, apart from the brief attempt to engage with the matters by the final Government speaker, we just had the Minister reeling off the usual list of achievements and he did not really engage with the central thrust of the motion. Deputy Darragh O'Brien and I agree that, as noted ad nauseamin this motion and more generally, public land should be used for public and affordable housing. The other specifics in the motion do not in any sense cut against that. We are saying there is a reason we are not getting public and affordable housing on public land or from the private sector. Coincidentally, Ms Leilani Farha came to Ireland this week and her words reflected exactly what is in this motion. That was not orchestrated. Along with the human misery being suffered by those affected by the housing and homelessness crisis, there is another group of people making money out of it. The worse the crisis gets, the more money they make from it.

Look at the largest house builder in the State, namely, Cairn Homes. It plans to build 12,000 units but how many social units were built in 2016? A total of 103. Last year, Cairn Homes built 200 units and next year it will build 800. That is pathetic because it owns one of the biggest landbanks in Dublin. The owners of the company sold 2.1% of their shares in 2017 between the three of them for €26 million. The three founders also split €61 million in shares last year and they raked in €4.1 million in wages and bonuses between them. This is the biggest developer in the country and it is drip feeding small amounts of housing into the market to boost share prices and make an absolute killing, and we are allowing it to do so. NAMA has flogged €40 billion of property because of the mandate this Government gave to entities such as Cairn and vulture funds like I-RES REIT.

We can go through the list of these institutional investors. Hines is going to build the biggest new development in Cherrywood but it has not built a single unit yet. Some €15 million from LIHAF has gone in but there is no guarantee of any affordable housing from that scheme. Even the social housing being sold back is costing local authorities €250,000 and €450,000 when the site was bought from NAMA for a song. Does Hines state that it builds houses? No. Its website refers to "intelligent real estate investments" and states "We build smart investments". It is what the company does. It drip feeds housing or does not build it at all and the measures being taken by the Government have increased the value of its property and land, encouraging speculation.

There has been no answer to the following question, which I have asked several times of the Government. Why did the original 40% affordable housing condition on LIHAF funding get dropped within weeks? If it had been implemented, it would have cut against the profiteering of the private developers. How could they sell property at an inflated price if the State had affordable housing at genuinely affordable rates? This is why the public landbank is not being developed.

Why has the Government not provided a definition of "affordable housing"? How can any of the public sites be developed if the Government refuses to define "affordable" while insisting that the housing must be public and affordable? None of the sites at Shanganagh, Oscar Traynor Road or Inchicore can move forward while the Government does not provide a definition. If it did provide one, the profits of these profiteers would be hit. That is the problem - the Government is dancing to the tune of profiteers.

See this speech in context