Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach said a couple of weeks ago that the State should not be renting homes on a long-term basis from funds involved in the practice of bulk purchase of housing estates. He went on to say that he would like this practice to end in the long term. Last year, 1,440 homes were leased from local authorities. This year, as we now know, 2,400 homes will be leased at a cost of €1 billion over a 25-year period. The State will not own these homes and tenants could be evicted when the lease agreement ends. Is there is not a bit of déjà vugoing on here in terms of what happened when the housing assistance payment, HAP, was introduced in 2014? We were told the scheme was only going to be a short-term arrangement. It started off with a cost of €0.5 million, we were told, but €543 million in State funding now goes into private landlords' pockets. Is this not an incredible situation for the State to be in and an incredible waste of public funding when we should be doing otherwise, namely, building houses? Does the Taoiseach agree that this is a consequence of the housing policy of his Government and successive Governments?

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