Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputies O'Reilly and Ó Broin.

Let me make it clear: the housing crisis is not an accident. It did not happen as the result of some mysterious market forces. We need to call a spade a spade in this House. This housing crisis has happened as a result of the deliberate policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We just have to look at the impact it is having on first-time buyers, who have been locked out of the market because Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have designed a taxation system that allows international vulture funds to scoop up these properties at a very high cost, pushing up house prices for everybody. The Minister of State took to his feet and said the Department of Finance is monitoring the taxation of these funds. There is not much monitoring needed, however, because these funds do not pay any tax on the sky-high rents they charge the citizens of this city and throughout the State. They do not pay any capital gains tax when they flip the assets in the future, with the uplift that results from that. They pay very little stamp duty, and not the 7.5% that any other company needs to. That is not a loophole. It was deliberately designed by the Minister of State's party and Fianna Fáil over successive Finance Bills.

The Government did not just wake up today and figure out this was a problem, given that we in Sinn Féin have been raising this issue for the past five years. We have tabled amendment after amendment to close these tax advantages and to allow a level playing field for first-time buyers. As late as last year, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party voted against ensuring these funds would not be provided with that tax advantage. We have heard the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, say these are only small fears and the Government will monitor the situation. He should tell that to the people in Maynooth who desperately hope they will get onto the property ladder but who see the vulture fund come in and swoop 135 houses from right under their noses because the Government facilitated it in doing that. These advantages have to end now. Let us wake up because this will be the story of 2021. Investment fund after investment fund will buy large swathes of new estates, locking out future generations from home ownership, not by chance or an accident but because of the deliberate policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and despite numerous attempts by Sinn Féin to close these loopholes and advantages.

The motion should be supported by the House. We need to reduce rents by freezing them and putting a tax rebate of one month's rent into people's pockets, increase investment in public housing and bring an end to the tax advantages these vulture funds have been given by the Minister of State's party and Fianna Fáil over recent years.

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