Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Earlier today, the Minister said the purpose of these measures was to protect homes for families. That was a telling remark. Clearly this Government does not believe that families live in apartments. It believes that apartments are for students and renters but not for families, it seems, so they are not protected and they are left to the vultures. It may come as news to the Minister that the majority of planning permissions granted last year were for apartments, with 26,000 granted compared with 18,000 granted for houses. Last year was the second year in a row that planning permissions for houses declined. This is a phenomenon that predates Covid. If you strip out one-off housing and social homes from the approximately 44,000 planning permissions granted last year, cuckoo funds will be free to feast on 75% of what remains. Is this what the Minister calls protection? He is slapping on an ineffective 10% stamp duty increase on the bulk purchase of 25% of available units. Is it any wonder the share price of I-RES REIT increased this morning after the Minister's measures were announced?

There is a crisis in housing and this Government just does not seem to get it. It does not want to get it. The Minister has abandoned Dublin, the location of 75% of planning permissions for apartments, and the mid-east, which comprises a further 14%. Fine Gael, in its approach to planning and development, introduced tax breaks for development funds and dismantled building standards to supercharge their profits. That created a monster and the Minister is refusing to cage it. We have build-to-rent monstrosities going up all over Dublin and other urban areas, which will never be available to buy. Nobody would want to live in them long-term anyway because building standards were shredded by the Minister's ex-colleague, Eoghan Murphy, in 2018. Since then, they can be smaller, have much less storage space, have no private outside space, and be devoid of communal amenities. As a result of the Minister's housing policies, these apartments are cheaper to build, more expensive to rent, and impossible to buy. That is a neat summation of this Government's housing policy. One such monstrosity was granted planning permission despite containing single-aspect, north-facing studios the size of car parking spaces. Is that the future the Minister wants for people in urban areas, many of whom are now working from home and living and working in substandard apartments while paying extortionate rent every month for the privilege?

Our housing market is broken. The only people whom it works for are the vultures and the cuckoo funds. Nothing in these measures will change that. We need mixed developments in which people want to live long term. Apartments that are an appropriate size for modern living and for families are a crucial element of that.

If the Minister really wanted to tackle this problem, he would do something about rents. High rents and high yields, along with the tax breaks, are why these funds are swarming on Irish property at present. Does the Minister know what the average rent is in Kildare? It is the county that apparently woke him up to the damage being caused by these funds. It is €1,495 per month. Does he know what cuckoo funds are demanding in rent for a two-bed home in a new estate in Maynooth? It is €1,995. They went nearly €2,000 per month in rent despite the fact that the sale price of those homes is cheaper than the average sale price in the county, at €270,000 compared with €292,000. Average homes attracting extraordinary rent is the nub of the problem. There is no cap on rental costs for new builds. Funds can charge what they like and we know that they do. Even if people are unwilling to pay these high rents, investment funds prefer to leave them empty rather than reduce the price. Up to 50% of some high-end developments in Dublin are empty at present. Funds can afford to leave them empty and ensure that rent levels remain artificially high. There is no penalty when they do that.

In Paris, property tax on vacant homes was tripled to 60% to address the problem of properties being left empty but we do nothing like that here. If rents had increased in line with inflation for the past ten years, they would have gone up by 5.1%. Instead, during that period, they have doubled. An entire generation of people has been betrayed by this Government and previous Fine Gael-led Governments. They have been called "Generation Rent" by some but they are actually "Generation Spent". They have insecure jobs, insecure homes and, as a consequence, insecure lives. The ESRI told us this week that they will be the first generation who will be worse off than their parents. This is the legacy of decades of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments. Their failed policies and mismanagement are situations that they have learned nothing whatsoever from. These proposals tonight, including the proposals about planning, will make no significant difference to that generation.

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