Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The proposal that is before us will do nothing other than reinforce the reality that the Government is led by the interests of developers, vulture funds and cuckoo funds. I represent the constituency of Dublin Bay South where, generation after generation, in communities like those in Pearse Street, Kevin Street, Ringsend and around the Iveagh Trust, people have grown up in apartments and flats. Those apartments and flats are homes as well and the inner-city communities who live in them matter. Unless apartments are included in measures to tackle cuckoo funds, we will witness the fast-tracking of ordinary working families being pushed out of their communities.

Many people in the inner city believe there is already a process of social cleansing taking place. The gentrification of long-established working-class communities has been gathering pace. These proposals will mean the Government is, in effect, abandoning inner-city communities and handing the inner city over to vulture funds. People who grew up in areas like Ringsend, Pearse Street, Rathmines and Harold's Cross are well used to not being able to afford a home locally. The big companies like Google and Facebook have been moving into urban villages like Irishtown and Harold's Cross. As they move in, prices soar and become increasingly unaffordable. Huge areas of the inner city are made up of apartments and flats. The docklands area is almost all apartments.

The plan for the Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend will see 3,500 new homes, all of them apartments. These proposals will have no impact on that plan. What will stop vulture funds from coming in and buying up all the apartments on the site? This resolution certainly will not. What will the Minister say to the residents in Irishtown who were hoping to buy an affordable house there? The Irish Glass Bottle Housing Action Group, which has fought hard for new homes on the site, fears there will be no affordable homes delivered. A home that costs €450,000 is not affordable. The group has not been reassured by the Government or Dublin City Council that the homes promised by the previous Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage will be delivered. These proposals will not protect those 3,500 new homes from vulture or cuckoo funds.

In ten years' time, all of the 3,500 new homes on the Poolbeg Peninsula could well be owned by a vulture fund charging vast amounts in rent. There will be no one who went to primary school in Ringsend or Pearse Street living in those apartments because they will not be able to afford them. A total of 900 of the homes planned for construction on the Irish Glass Bottle site will be public and affordable. That means they will cost €450,000, which is not affordable. It is unlikely that many of the children who went to Marian College, Ringsend College or Westland Row CBS will be able to afford them. The idea that they will be classed as affordable at a price of €450,000 is mind-boggling.

Project Ireland 2040 identifies as a key component of enabling future growth in Ireland. It states, "Identifying a number of ambitious large-scale regeneration areas for the provision of new housing and employment throughout the city and metropolitan area and the measures required to facilitate them as integrated, sustainable development projects." What is sustainable about letting investment funds buy up the bulk of apartments in Dublin city? What is sustainable about enabling those funds to rent out apartments for sky-high rents? What is sustainable about the funds' practice of leaving apartments empty for years if the sky-high rent prices cannot be obtained? There is a prime example of this in the Capital Dock development, a stone's throw from Whelan House in Ringsend and Pearse House on Pearse Street. The rent for a two-bedroom apartment there is €4,000 per month. The local community lost out when the Part V provision for Capital Dock was delivered outside the area. The rents are only affordable for some senior executives in the construction and technology sectors, which means the locals lose out again. This sort of development is not sustainable unless one is a lucky winner of the EuroMillions draw. How can anyone take seriously what the Government says about making Dublin a more liveable and sustainable city when it continues to allow these cuckoo funds to run riot?

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