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

We gave the Government solutions in a motion that was passed in this House by the majority in October 2018, on foot of the Raise the Roof demonstration. I inform the Tánaiste and anyone watching the debate that last Tuesday, Raise the Roof agreed to hold another national demonstration on 18 May, for which we make an appeal to everyone in emergency accommodation, on a housing list or who cannot afford the obscene rents or property prices being charged in the private market. We will appeal to everyone who is in mortgage distress to come out onto the streets and ensure the coming election is a referendum on the failed housing policies of the Government. We gave the Government solutions in the motion which the Government ignored but was passed by the House. The Government must stop evictions into homelessness now. It must freeze rents now, build at least 10,000 council houses per year, not the pathetic 2,000 that were built last year, and it must expropriate any land or property that is being sat on and speculated on by the investors the Government invited into the country. Even the UN has condemned the Government for handing over the residential property market to vultures that exploit the misery of people affected by the housing crisis.

We have offered the solutions and the Government ignores them. Is it not the case that the Government ignores them because it is worried that they will impact on the profits of Cairn Homes, Ires REIT, Lone Star, Kennedy Wilson and such, which are making an obscene fortune from the misery of people affected by this crisis?

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