Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Deputy Barry.

The sorry saga of this special deal for property owners and developers tells a very important truth about the nature of the housing crisis. We do not have a housing crisis just because no one has figured out what to do to resolve it.

7 o’clock

If you go out onto the street and campaign on the issue of housing, the average person that you meet will have the essentials of what needs to happen. We need a ban on economic evictions, we need rent controls to bring rents down to affordable levels and we need public housing built on a massive scale. People know that. There is plenty of evidence for it. It is not that we do not have the answers; we have them. The reason the housing crisis persists and gets worse week after week, month after month and year after year is because policy is designed for those who benefit from the crisis. That is the truth. For them, there is no housing crisis; there is an immense housing opportunity. What is revealed from the freedom of information request of the Business Postis precisely how that takes place in terms of the transmission of the interests of the property developers, the big builders, etc., to the Government and then translated into legislation. What this reveals very clearly is the Irish Home Builders Association, IHBA, part of the Construction Industry Federation and Property Industry Ireland lobbying for precisely the exemption that they got. The argumentation that they use is interesting. According to the IHBA:

This provision could have an unintended consequence and reduce supply. This additional tax could mean marginally viable developments may not be started.

They are very concerned about ensuring that all the land is used and that we have full supply of housing and so on, which is very kind-hearted and generous of them. According to Property Industry Ireland, "bringing this up to 20% of homes could reduce supply on land that has traded in recent years; some schemes will be less viable, etc." Again, this is wrapped in the language of supply because, of course, they are in favour of having the maximum supply of housing and so on. What is missing is the blunt, brutal logic and language of profit that underlies their lobbying. That is the truth. The job of these lobbying organisations is to lobby for their interests, not for the interests of resolving the housing crisis. They do not care about resolving the housing crisis. They care about representing their members and their members benefit by maximising profit. A situation whereby they would have to give up an extra 10% for social and affordable housing is not in their interests, and so they lobby against it. The Government welcomes that lobbying and then implements it in legislation and for a brief moment says that any attempts to do otherwise would not just be wrong or disagreeable from the point of view of the Government, it would be unconstitutional.

It remains the case that, again and again, when the corporate lobbyists say jump, the Government says "How high?" In the summer, the Government made a song and dance of reversing the cut to Part V housing, which is inadequate but a step in the right direction, empowering councils to buy up to 20% to build for social and affordable housing. The truth is from that moment, behind the scenes and underneath the headlines, the corporate lobbyists were working to gut the Bill. What we have now can be only described as a sweetheart deal to ensure that it does not apply to any sites bought from 2015 to 2021. The bottom line is that there could be estates being built in the 2030s that will be exempt from the increases for social and affordable housing. That is what is being done by way of a measure that is being brought in now as part of a fanfare of how we are going to resolve the housing crisis and so on. It underlines for me that to solve the housing crisis we need a Government of the left, committed eco-socialist policies and fundamental social change, which is willing to not represent the interests of developers, to take on the speculators and developers, to kick-out the vultures and take the big corporate landlord properties into public ownership.

I want to make a second point. This is about private land on which we get 10% or 20% provision, which is an important part of the debate. The idea that any public land should be handed over to private developers is outrageous. It makes no sense at a time of massive crisis, yet it still continues. The Government parties try to make out that those who oppose the sell-off of public land are somehow standing in the way of addressing the housing crisis. Last week, public land in Killinarden suitable for more than 600 homes was sold to a private developer at the behest of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Green Party supported them and, unfortunately, the Social Democrats and the Labour Party went along with them. Sinn Féin abstained out of pressure of not wanting to be seen to be against housing. The result is that 123 of those homes will be sold at massively inflated market rates, totally out of reach of ordinary workers in Tallaght and families who could have been housed there will instead have to watch on from emergency accommodation as private developers profiteer from public land. A further 60% of the homes will also be unaffordable. They are so-called affordable homes at 15% discount of market rates but as market rates shoot through the roof we know exactly what that will mean. There should be no more sell-off of public lands by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, no more support for dodgy deals by the Social Democrats and the Labour Party and no more sitting on the sidelines by Sinn Féin. Instead, we need to draw a line in the sand and insist that public land is used for public housing.

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