Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am unable to support this amendment. I have no ideological hang-ups about developers, builders or whatever. Probably against my better judgment and despite serious concerns, I voted for the Land Development Agency Bill. I am willing to try anything to solve the housing problem. Many years ago, when the vulture funds first arrived, the former Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, whom I wish well, said this was a welcome and necessary development. They are anything but a welcome development. I will relate to the House again what I think of vultures. I am a sheep farmer and when lambing sheep we know what vultures do. They pick from the bones. We have to get real here.

We are dealing with the Finance (Covid-19 and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021 and here we are, almost in the last hour of the second last week of the Dáil, inserting this clause to support the vulture and cuckoo funds again. It is completely wrong and indecent. If we do not vote for it, we will be told off. Emotional bullying is now part of the Taoiseach and Tánaiste’s whole Covid-19 strategy and narrative. Anyone who questions it is considered less than patriotic. It is the same with this amendment. We are told that 2,400 or 2,500 homes will be built under this measure. It is a costly, wasteful and circumvented way to build them.

The Government should fund local authorities to build houses and get the monkey of An Taisce off the backs of young people in rural areas so that they can build their own houses. Let the banks give mortgages out to people once all of the reasonable issues have been gone through. If people have received a Covid-19 payment for a week, the banks are now withdrawing their mortgages from them. This is blackguarding. We are not all in this together. It is time that the Minister, and his colleague the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, told the banks they are not functioning. We know how the insurance companies function and we can see the dysfunctionality of that now. They are flying away from the land despite all the new changes in payouts and claims.

Big is beautiful for this Government. It is infatuated with big ideas. It is the same with big pharma as it is with the big vulture funds. The small man does not matter. The local authorities could and did build houses through the decades, as did the voluntary housing sector. I salute Dr. Donal McManus and his team at the Irish Council for Social Housing and the supports the council gives to the 300 or 400 small organisations involved in this area. There are some big organisations involved in social housing too. They are building and have the capacity to do so. They now have to compete with vulture funds and others which are receiving breaks from stamp duty and everything else. This is such a circumvented and convoluted set-up. It is an "around the house and mind the dresser" arrangement.

If a local authority wants to build a scheme of houses, it has to go through about seven different phases where it must go up to the Department, down in the car to another part of the Department, back up and around the house and the country. These funds then have the red carpet rolled out for them. We let them come in and when they are here they make a fool of us.

I fundamentally disagree with the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme given the amount of money we are paying. I have received figures recently on my county and they are astonishing. If we do not build houses, we will never get out of this spiral. We need to build decent houses. Perhaps the Government might look at some of the offices that are lying empty close to this building. I saw them as I walked around the area this evening in the lovely sunshine, which was a big contrast from yesterday. These could be redesigned as housing units, especially for young people. We need to be imaginative. We are supposed to be encouraging people to work from home. Some people, including some public servants, do not want to come back to the office, so we will not need all these office buildings.

I want to support some of the measures in the Bill. I spoke to an earlier amendment but I cannot support this one. It is a trick of the loop and a three-card trick and is oriented towards vulture funds and cuckoo funds. Why they have the Government in such a stranglehold I do not know. It is as simple as that. I will not support the amendment.

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