Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, the CSO reported that house prices had risen by 4% in the past year and that, since February 2012, property prices here in Dublin had increased by a staggering 98%. In this city house prices have doubled. The same picture can be seen right across the State. The Tánaiste has sat at the Cabinet table for the entirety of this period. This is the Tánaiste's record.

This week has rightly been dominated by the housing issue, which has been described as a social crisis. A report published on Tuesday by the ESRI found that, through a combination of stagnant wages and high housing costs, those aged in their 20s and 30s are likely to be the first generation with lower living standards than the generation before them, an historical first - again, the Tánaiste's record. Home ownership is at its lowest level in decades - again, the Tánaiste's record. This is a result of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael policy, a refusal to invest adequately in social and affordable housing and a decision to hand the provision of housing, which should be a public good, over to the free market and high finance to the benefit of speculators, developers and landlords. As a consequence, the Government has presided over a social crisis, with not one but many generations looking towards their future and their ability to secure a home and start a family with anxiety and despair.

The block purchase of homes in a new housing development in Maynooth by an investment fund under the noses of first-time buyers, who had worked so hard to save for a deposit and have a shot at home ownership, acted as a lightning rod for many more such cases. As I have said before, however, this is nothing new and certainly not an accident. In 2019, six out of every ten new homes in Dublin were taken off the market in sales to these funds. They have been facilitated and encouraged by Government policy through their paying no tax on rental profits, no capital gains tax and little by way of stamp duty. Sinn Féin has been calling for years for the Government to end these tax advantages, warning that these funds were not only pricing ordinary individuals out of the market but driving up prices and rents as well. In 2019, the value of home purchases by these funds grew by 7% across Europe; in this State, in the same year, it grew by 141% - the Tánaiste's record. I expect these funds to continue to snap up houses at the expense of struggling homeowners and homebuyers in the months ahead, just as they have been doing for years, a direct result of the policy of the Tánaiste's party and Government.

The Tánaiste knows well that over seven months ago, during discussion on the Finance Bill, we called on the Government to impose a stamp duty surcharge on investment funds buying up homes in the Irish market. During the passage of that Bill, the Government refused and voted against Sinn Féin's proposal to examine the tax treatment of these funds. Last week, however, when the public's attention was drawn to this issue and the Government's policies and their devastating consequences were laid bare for all to see, the Government told us that it would rush to bring forward proposals to fix the problems and that those proposals would be before us this week.

What policies does the Government propose? Were these proposals discussed at Cabinet? Will the Government end the tax advantage these funds were given by the Government and implement Sinn Féin's proposal to impose a stamp duty surcharge on them?

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