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

I thank Deputy Lahart. The problem is that the respect of the Government only extends to what it considers to be the political establishment. It does not extend to forces outside of this establishment even though on many of critical issues that are facing this country right now those who are not part of the establishment have played a key role in trying to mobilise forces to offer alternative approaches to deal with some of the most pressing crises we face, most notably the housing crisis. I propose to speak in detail about the housing crisis as many of us were involved in organising and mobilising for the huge Raise the Roof protest that took place last week and we tabled the motion seeking radical measures to deal with the appalling housing and homelessness emergency, which was passed by the Dáil. Those of us not in the establishment predicted this crisis five or six years ago. We warned the Government that it was going to happen, but the Government does not have the humility to admit it got it wrong or to accept that it should listen to those who warned that this crisis was coming down the line. The more things change, the more things stay the same appears to be the watchword of the political establishment in this country. However, we will continue to mobilise the resistance outside of this Dáil to the failed policies of this Government. To address the serious issues that face our society and our citizens, we will force the Government to listen or we will push it and the political establishment that has failed people out of the way to bring in a new dispensation which puts the needs of ordinary people ahead of the privileged profit hungry elite that it appears dominate the priorities of Irish society.

This budget desperately needed to be a budget that addressed the social emergency that is the housing and homelessness crisis, the disaster in our public health service, the existential threat of climate change, the serious crisis in our education system and the growing inequality and deprivation in Irish society but instead it is a budget of deception, with the Government seeking to fool the people that it is trying to address these problems. It is not, as some said, an election budget. Rather, it is a budget to avoid an election. It is an effort on the part of the two major parties to avoid an election and to quell the growing discontent about the housing emergency, the health crisis, climate change and the so many other inequalities and injustices that reign in our society. Most significantly, it needed to be the budget that addressed the housing crisis but it failed catastrophically in this regard. What we got was deception and the Government playing with numbers in order to deceive people into believing that it was taking the issues seriously and is responding to the heart-rending stories told by Amanda on "Morning Ireland" the other day or by Terry O'Reilly, from my constituency, a woman in her 30s who as a soldier served this State for eight years and is now sleeping in a car in Shankill. There are so many others in similar situations. Behind every one of the horrible statistics that index the housing crisis are human beings and families and the hardships they are enduring. There are 10,000 people in emergency accommodation, of which 4,000 are children; 140,000 families on the housing waiting lists; 70,000 families in serious mortgage distress and, as is now becoming apparent in the context of the Take Back the City protest, a generation of young people who despair that they will ever be able to secure an affordable secure roof over their heads. Even if they get educated and get jobs, they will not be able to afford a place to live. What an indictment of this Government and the political establishment that as we move into the 21st century we have still cannot resolve the problem of the slum conditions endured by working class people which James Connolly sought to address at the turn of the 19th century. Rather than acknowledge this problem and take the radical action necessary to deal with the appalling human tragedy that is the housing emergency, we got deception and smoke and mirrors from the Government in terms of what is in this budget to address that crisis.

The way the game is played is to make comparisons that deceive people, rather than throwing light on what the Government actually did in the budget. The headline is to say that €400 million more is being invested than in 2018, but is much more being invested in 2019 than was already promised in Rebuilding Ireland? Of course there is not. What was already in Rebuilding Ireland is all that will be delivered by the budget. The Government will only provide the resources that are necessary to deliver what it had already promised. Those resources were already pre-committed and outlined in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform paper on social housing output, which was produced in the summer. That is what is actually in the budget.

To answer the mystery on figures to which Deputy Coppinger alluded, I spent this morning and last night studying the figures to see how the Government could be claiming to spend all of this extra money without it materialising in anything different in terms of actually delivering housing, which is what will happen. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform paper on housing is informative because it neatly tables what was already in Rebuilding Ireland. Yesterday the Minister said that 10,000 new social housing units would be added to the stock in 2019, but that was in Rebuilding Ireland three years ago. The only difference is that the figure in Rebuilding Ireland was 9,540. The only addition to that will be 460 units. The big trumpeting of the housing budget and presumably Fianna Fáil's success in trying to get more resources from the Government means that the target has gone from 9,540 to 10,000. That does not even scratch the surface of the problem we are facing but it gets worse because the 640 units are not even new. Those 640 houses will come from Part V provisions. It is in the small print of the budget document and it relates to housing we hope to get from the private sector in the Part V arrangements. In other words, this was already included in the targets. In terms of new public housing stock, not a single extra house beyond what was already promised will be built.

The key point is that those original promises cannot address the crisis because the Government is relying on the private sector to address about 80% of the deficit in public and affordable housing. The Government's own targets say that 137,000 social housing units are needed and in Rebuilding Ireland the vast majority of that is planned to be delivered through the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and the housing assistance payment, HAP. The exact figures are for 83,000 RAS tenancies and 3,800 HAP tenancies. The vast bulk of what the Government hopes will resolve the crisis is to be delivered through the private sector by relying on private landlords and corporate property speculators like IRES Reit, Cerberus, Kennedy Wilson and Cairn Homes. All of these people who bought land and property from the State and the people through the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, at discount prices will now charge the State an arm and a leg to rent or lease it back to it. It will be a massive black hole in the public finances which will grow exponentially over the coming years but will not actually address the housing crisis because these companies can pull out of those arrangements at a moment's notice, leaving the State with nothing at all.

Here are a few random headlines which really tell the story of what is going on in housing; "Cairn Homes profit jumps 191%"; "Cairn Home founders receive €61.4 m in share awards"; "Profits at Ires Reit more than double during first half of 2018"; "Cerberus paid just €70,000 on Irish profits of €20 m"; and "Profits soar at one of Ireland's most well known developers", which is Park Developments. Anyone can go through the list, all that has to be done is to Google profits and property speculators and one will get all of these newspaper headlines. An obscene fortune is being made by these companies to which the Government, Fine Gael and specifically Deputy Noonan handed over €40 billion worth of NAMA assets for a song, for which they will now charge the State an absolute fortune, not to mind the extortionate rents that they are charging to tenants.

I allude again to the story which I told yesterday about Ires REIT and the Sandyford residents. I went up there last week and found out that Ires REIT was seeking a 25% to 30% increase in the rent, exploiting loopholes that the Government left in the residential tenancies legislation. That is what is going on and against that background, the Government then brought in a new 100% mortgage tax relief for landlords on borrowings they make to either purchase or refurbish property. This is a scandal. The public will pay to incentivise people to speculate on property, increase rents and evict people. I really want to underline this point because it sounds good in theory to give a tax break to landlords to fix up their properties. That is until it is discovered that fixing up the property is one of the main loopholes that allows landlords to go above the 4% rent caps and to evict tenants by telling them they have to do substantial refurbishments and therefore the tenants must leave. We had to fight a case with Apollo Global Management in my area over this. It is another one of these big asset managers which bought an apartment block from NAMA and then sent letters to all of the tenants informing them that the company was carrying out substantial refurbishments and the tenants must leave. The residents got organised and fought that and the case was won but huge numbers of people do not know that they can fight or do not have the confidence to do so and even in that case, many of the residents have subsequently left because they know that Apollo Global Management is just waiting for the next excuse to get them out and so they leave because they cannot bear the insecurity and worry of knowing that the people who own the property are trying to drive them out. Huge numbers of other people are simply being driven out because of the tactics of these vulture funds.

It is a scandal and what makes it all the worse is that we will pay additional money to these companies. I said that the extra figure allocated for housing by the Government is not what it seems, but the bulk of it will be an €121 million increase in what we will pay out for HAP tenancies. However, that will not even deliver a single extra HAP tenancy. As bad and inadequate as HAP is, one would think that paying out an extra €121 million in HAP payments might yield a few extra HAP tenancies, but the Minister confirmed yesterday that the €121 million which will be added to the existing €300 million will deliver 16,760 HAP tenancies in 2019. How many tenancies were promised in Rebuilding Ireland for 2019? It was 16,760 so we will pay an extra €121 million to get the same number of tenancies that were already promised. What is happening there is that we are now having to budget an extra €121 million because the HAP landlords are jacking up the rents that they are charging the State to provide the same number of tenancies. They are extorting the State and we have assisted them in doing so and provided them with tax breaks on all of it in the form of section 110 tax relief, which is beyond being a scandal. I hope that someone begins to investigate what is going on with section 110 tax relief because as I said yesterday we do not even know how much tax is foregone on that.

How can we address all of this rather than just critique it? We have enough land in NAMA and the local authorities to build 114,000 houses. If we put the €2 billion that has just been put in the rainy day fund into additional capital expenditure, we could deliver 20,000 council houses on public land every year starting next year. We could also fast-track the delivery of Part V housing. The Government boasts about planning permissions and says there are loads of planning permissions but they are getting planning permission and inflating the value of the property but not actually building anything so we never get the Part V social housing element. How could we address that? We could take the land now. As soon as they get their planning permission, we should grab the 10% - which should be 20% - and build on it now. We could get even more than 20,000 houses built. We could build on our own land. We need to freeze rents and evictions until we begin to provide the public and affordable housing we need.

I will comment on education. What the Government has done, or rather not done, in further education is an absolute scandal. Irish universities are tumbling down the international rankings. It is a very serious issue for the long-term future of this country and for its reputation and even for the Government's beloved foreign direct investment. Our education system is declining. We will take 18,500 extra students into the system next year. The increase in further education funding was 1%, about €13 million extra, which means the actual public subsidy per student in further education will decline significantly. I received a letter this morning from the Irish Universities Association saying this is one of the big scandals of the budget. Given the dramatic increase in student numbers in third level education, the Government's failure to add additional funds to third level education means there will be a further decline in the quality of third level education next year and in the years following. Even the Government and Fine Gael should consider that a pretty serious concern.

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