Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to apologise on behalf of our colleague and good friend, Deputy Michael Healy-Rae, who is absent through no fault of his own.

I take this opportunity to declare that I am not a landlord and never have been. Unlike some of the previous speakers, especially the members of Solidarity-People Before Profit, I do not demonise every landlord. Are we going to drive all landlords out of existence? If we are, then what will we do? We have to be reasonable and fair. Rent freezes were meant to be introduced in Berlin - one was brought in many years ago in New York - and other places. However, the rent freeze for Berlin has not yet been implemented. A rent freeze is a simplistic solution. We need real solutions but we also need to be rid of this Fine Gael-Independent Alliance Government because it has an ideological hang-up about building local authority houses and about looking after people from the cradle to the grave. It does not want to look after anyone. That is the fundamental problem.

An Teachta Tóibín is 100% right. The Government will welcome in the vulture funds. The banks are making people homeless. It is a case of to hell with ordinary accidental landlords who might happen to have been left a house. The Government has no interest in these people, it wants to protect the corporate landlords and big business. It has never been interested in the ordinary people. I can tell the Minister of State that. There is no senior Minister here tonight and no Government Deputies. The benches are empty. The Government lost two votes in the Seanad tonight because it had no one there to oppose the votes. The life has gone out of this Government. The sooner it lies down, the better. It has no interest in the ordinary people but they have a lot of interest in it and, as they showed in the recent by-elections, they are waiting for it. They are waiting in the long grass. It might be the middle of January and the grass will be low, but they will find the Government with the peann luaidhe in the ballot box and it will be banished. We have had nine years of this Government and it has done nothing only line fat cats' pockets and give way to corporate greed and vulture funds and everything else. That is what it is good at. That is what it always did but it will get its answer and then it will be to hell or to Connacht with it.

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