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

I would like it noted that People Before Profit proposed three amendments to the Government's motion, all of which have been ruled out of order. For the record, I should say what they were. First, we proposed that the stamp duty should be 90%, not 10% as the Government is proposing or 15% or 17% as the other Opposition parties are proposing. We do not just need to disincentivise funds or make purchasing a little more costly. Rather, we need to exclude them completely from the market so that they cannot bulk purchase houses, price people out of the market and control the prices and rents therein. Second, we proposed that the threshold at which the higher stamp duty kicked in would not be ten properties, but two. In other words, there could be no multiple purchases by these profit-hungry funds. Third, apartments should be included.

The Government will not accept any of these amendments, of course. With this motion, it is simply responding to the fury that people felt as a result of seeing these cuckoos swooping in and purchasing whole estates. Since the Government had to be seen to be doing something, it has engineered to do the absolute minimum, no doubt in deep consultation with the very cuckoo funds and vulture funds that it is supposed to be trying to address. The Government is not planning or even attempt to deal with the cuckoo and vulture funds because it is up to its neck in this with them and has been since at least 2011 or 2012 shortly after the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government came into office when it held multiple meetings with them to invite them into Ireland, it informed them of the tax benefits that they could have by investing in Irish property, for example, paying no tax on their rental revenues or capital gains, and the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, sold off property worth more than €40 billion with the Government's active encouragement. The same funds that were invited in by the Fine Gael-Labour Party Government are now being given the opportunity to move into other sectors of the housing market.

The extent of what is happening is terrifying. One would think that the Government had learned its lesson when all of these policies led to the worst housing and homelessness crisis in the history of the State, with rents and house prices going off the Richter scale and 80% to 90% of workers being priced out of the purchase market or asked to pay rents that no worker can afford of €2,000, €2,500 or €3,000 per month, but what is happening has actually got worse. I will elaborate on a point that I made earlier today. People should Google Housing Together. Its website reads:

A Unique Opportunity For Investors Seeking Capital Growth And Secure Income

Government Backed Residential Property Investment

By the way, this relates to the provision of social housing. It is about capital growth and secure incomes for investors. So far, Housing Together has bought property worth €50 million and leased it to local authorities at extortionate rates. As I recited to the Taoiseach, Housing Together boasts that it will achieve an annual average yield of 5%, high incomes at low risk, the opportunity to lock in rents linked to inflation, no maintenance, no voids, no letting fees and no advertising costs.

It further boasts, giving examples, that, say, a 25-year lease on a two-bedroom apartment in Dublin will net investors €15,279 a year in rent. At the end of a 25-year to 30-year lease, they will have made €475,000, which is a yield of approximately 7.8%, and they will still own the asset. The State will have paid through the nose and these people will have made an absolute fortune. More millionaires will have been made who did absolutely nothing except invest in "Government-backed investment opportunities". At the end of it all, the State will own nothing. The funds can flog the assets off and the people in so-called social housing can be ditched, just like the HAP residents in St. Helen's Court face being thrown out because a vulture fund decided it wants vacant possession to drive up the value of the property. That will be happening on a mass scale because of Government policy.

At the other end of this twisted equation and heist, we have the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, investing in the funds that are doing this kind of thing. When the Government says we need these funds financed, I say we do not. We are already financing them through the ISIF, HAP payments, lease payments, RAS payments and the tax loopholes that allow them to pay no tax. They run off with the asset and the profits and we get nothing. We get neither affordable rents nor affordable housing. Why do we not use our capital to invest in public and affordable housing that is genuinely affordable, that we will own at the end of it and where the profits, instead of going into the pockets of these bloodsuckers and vultures, go into the coffers of the State and the people?

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