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

If this House has any purpose at all - I suspect the public sometimes wonders whether it does - it is to see crises coming down the line and act to prevent them. This month in 2013, at a meeting of the finance committee, I suggested to representatives of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Government that the moves to bring large global property investors into Ireland pursued by the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, would very likely lead to the return of the boom–bust cycle in property and to more property bubbles. The council and the Minister dismissed this as very unlikely at the time. Yesterday, the OECD, which is not a left-wing think tank, confirmed that bringing in those investors has recreated the conditions for the property bubble that we warned about six years ago at that meeting. What does the Taoiseach think about that warning? Does he believe the Government might put up its hands and say it may have made a mistake and that inviting the investors in may not have been the best idea, that the investors may not have assisted in having a sustainable housing sector, and that they may be, as the OECD is suggesting, contributing to the housing crisis and the unaffordability of housing, which is now an economic problem? It is not just a social crisis; it is now an economic problem and an existential threat to our economy in terms of our not being able to house our workers. We do not have anywhere to house the additional workers we need. A large number of people, never mind those rotting on housing lists and those whose incomes are just above the threshold under which they must be to get on a housing list, are totally lost. Their rents are more than the repayments on an extremely high mortgage, and getting a mortgage is completely impossible. As the OECD pointed out, the only way out of this is credit, which would be dangerous. We are in a complete cul-de-sac. The only way that cul-de-sac can be unblocked is if the State intervenes heavily in the housing sector to provide not-for-profit housing that individuals can afford.

See this speech in context