Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the debate on this important Bill and its intent to target the large-scale developers who have been hoarding land yet pay nothing for the privilege. The Bill will increase the vacant site levy to 25%, remove exemptions that decrease the levy, provide restricted definitions of what constitutes a vacant site and offer the owner of a site deemed vacant the opportunity to enter into negotiations with the relevant local authority or estate agency to sell the site for 60% of its value instead of paying the 25% vacant site levy.

Deputy Wallace is right. We need to stop developers sitting on land. That has led to land becoming overvalued, creating a housing supply which does not meet the needs of the population and which has created a homelessness crisis. It seems we also need to stop the Government, together with the developers, because the Government makes it work for them. The only way we can do that is by getting rid of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. That is the only way this will be changed.

The Minister of State, Deputy English, stated he felt that a 7% site levy was adequate. From whom did he get that sense? Where did it come from? How was it arrived at? That is what we have to know.

What has frustrated me the most throughout the housing crisis is that this Government and successive Governments, of which Fianna Fáil was a part, have made it their central policy to financialise housing, which has escalated this mess. The former Minister, Deputy Noonan, back in the day, gave a very big welcome to vulture funds and multinational developers coming into this country and made them a handsome profit at the expense of the welfare of the ordinary citizens of the country. The Government's relationship with developers has been so cosy it has led to developers sitting on land waiting for a handout until they can maximise their profit margins even further and the Government has been more than happy to feed the beast.

This profit-driven model has been in existence for half a century but was accelerated dramatically when Fine Gael came into power. Little or no social housing has been built, which fits into its model of the private sector reigning supreme and minimum intervention has since been carried out in the private sector. Every single housing measure the Government has put out to boost housing supply has utterly failed. That is because its policies give preferential treatment to land developers and not to ordinary people.

While the Government has claimed time and again that measures being introduced as part of Rebuilding Ireland would unlock more construction sites to delivering more housing units, this has not been the case after three years and house prices have been increasing year on year. Not only that but rental prices have been increasing as increasingly, more people cannot afford to buy a house and little or no social housing is available to them.

Housing is a fundamental right. People cannot live full lives without it and other rights fail to be realised without housing. That is the reason I have twice introduced the Thirty-fifth Amendment of the Constitution (Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) Bill, which includes the right to housing but which was voted down by Fianna Fáil and the Government because once again, they consistently prioritised private sector interests above the needs of individuals.

It is time for the Government to rights-proof decision making and bring the rights of the individual to the core of policy making. It must build social houses, increase tenant rights, control rents and invoke proposals such as the one Deputy Wallace has presented here today by putting the onus on developers to use land wisely, for the people and not themselves.

If we make housing a right, which the State then defends, we can prevent the same situation from occurring over and over again by having developers dominate our decision making process and finally we can have a Government that is accountable to the people. That, however, will not be a Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael Government.

See this speech in context