Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Every time we put forward proposals that would give security to those who are renting the usual two arguments are thrown out, one of which is that landlords will exit the sector, which I want to address first. There has been a 75% increase in the number of landlords in this country since 2008 and a 1.5% decrease in their number in recent years mainly because of obsolescence and the fact that nothing is being built. As for the idea that we are short of landlords, where would these landlords go? Would they leave the country carrying the houses on their backs? No, they would either leave them vacant and thereby not get any income from them or they would sell them in which case the house would be an addition to the market in dealing with the shortage of supply. I do not understand that argument.

The other argument is that this is unconstitutional. The Government would not let us insert the right to housing in the Constitution when we introduced a Bill only a short time ago. It would not accept any threat to private property rights. The case of the Tyrrelstown tenants was said to be unconstitutional but suddenly it was constitutional and the Government came around to the introduction of RPZs. The point is that enough pressure needs to put on the Government to bring in the type of legislation that is necessary. This proposal has been put forward by Focus Ireland, which is hardly a revolutionary socialist organisation, and many others.

This is the brutal logic of capitalism now. Landlords must retain their divine right to evict families over any other consideration, despite a housing emergency. Profit is the only law that matters This is ideological on the Minister of State's part. We have the public land. Mel Reynolds told us that NAMA and the councils have enough land to build 114,000 public houses. We certainly have the resources and the money. I can give countless examples to support that. The richest 18 people in this country have €60 billion net worth. We could build 400,000 houses with that alone. We know the Government found €1 billion in the corporate tax take that it did not know it was going to get. There is a great deal of money for this.

The Minister has talked about undersupply. He is bringing in two big investment companies to Cherrywood to build 3,000 housing units for rent. They will be unaffordable for families and tenants who need them. The State will end up putting people in them and paying HAP, RAS, and a rake of other corporate welfare payments. Why would the State not build those? That is what the State used to do.

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