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

Amendment No. 40 relates to the tax treatment of institutional investors and corporate landlords and their impact on the housing sector, affordability and rents. I did not hear all of Deputy Lahart's contribution but the thrust of it seemed to suggest that there was a time when we needed these investors and that they brought some beneficial impact to the housing sector but that maybe we need to tighten up a bit. I disagree with that narrative. I think it was a terrible mistake to invite them in, for which we are paying a terrible price. That was done in 2012 or 2013, when there were a lot of meetings - 65, I think - between the Department of Finance and these investor funds, where they no doubt became acquainted with the tax breaks that were available if they invested in the Irish property sector. They moved in at scale and bought up NAMA's portfolio, which was the biggest property portfolio in the world at the time and was in public hands. NAMA had cash sales of approximately €40 billion but the actual value of that portfolio is nearly double that now.

The State had in its hands the biggest property portfolio in the world. Even in the depths of a severe financial crisis, we could have solved the housing crisis, which predated the crash in 2012. It has always been present in my area and it has always been a disaster. It is heartbreaking having to deal with it day in, day out. We could have solved it with sites such as Cherrywood, which is being built out now by one of those investor funds, although it flipped quite a bit of it. Johnny Ronan has gotten his hands back on it, courtesy of the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council selling off some of the site. It is unbelievable stuff. I met with Hines staff who said they could not deliver the apartments there for anything less than €400,000. Someone would need in excess of €100,000, maybe €120,000, to buy one of those apartments. Average house prices in my area are now €560,000. It is just mind-boggling. A person would need an income of €150,000 or €160,000 to get a mortgage from a bank for a house of that price. These investors have contributed to all of this. The rents in my area are now in excess of €2,200 a month. Someone would need net after tax income of €26,000 just to pay the average rental price. I do not know how anybody could describe this situation as anything other than a disaster. It is resulting in the social cleansing of places like Dún Laoghaire, because working people are clearly never going to be able to afford those prices so they are just being driven out.

Hines sat on that huge portfolio for quite a long time, which I am sure was about waiting to get the prices up and flipping some of it on. Even though €15 million of funding from the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, went into Cherrywood, we still do not know how much affordable housing we are going to get for that. When the LIHAF was originally brought in, we were told that at least 40% of any development it funded would be affordable housing. Within a few weeks, that commitment disappeared from the conditionality around LIHAF and now we are getting next to nothing. We still do not know. Years on, we have no idea how much affordable housing we are going to get and what price that housing will be.

Similarly, Shanganagh Castle, which was a public site, has now been taken over by the LDA. We have been campaigning for nearly 15 years to get public and affordable housing built directly on that site. There is still not a sod turned and we still do not know how much the affordable housing is going to cost. It will be at a discount to the market but the market is at €560,000. Even a 25% discount would be worse than useless in addressing the housing crisis in our area.

All these investment funds build very little. There is some building going on now but only where they have deals to lease the housing back to the local authority at extortionate prices. Even then, after 25 years of those lease arrangements, those entities could pull out and the tenants could then be left high and dry. We know the likelihood of that happening on an individual level because we have seen it with HAP. People are socially housed under the HAP scheme with landlords who are getting extortionate money from the taxpayer, and week in, week out, landlords pull out of these arrangements. They decide it is more beneficial not to be in such arrangements, or they decide to sell their asset that has accumulated in value, or they just opt out of a HAP deal because they think they can get higher rent elsewhere. They do it for whatever reason.

I have brought up the St. Helen's Court residents around 50 times at this point. That complex was bought out by Apollo Global Management, a big American-based investment fund, which tried to increase the rent by 60%. It then tried to mass evict the residents but could not get away with that, so it flipped it on to another vulture fund, which tried again to mass evict them. It has slowly whittled down the tenants, who just could not bear the stress and anxiety of it all, and has now succeeded in legally mass evicting them. The tenants still have nowhere to go so they are still physically there but every day they wonder when they are going to be evicted. They have now gotten letters from that vulture fund saying it is taking them to court. It is going to sue them for costs unless they get out but they have nowhere to go because they cannot afford rents of €2,200. They were paying €1,000, which is hefty enough rent and they are willing to pay a bit more but they cannot afford the rents in our area. Where are they going to go? That is what these entities have done to the housing sector. In addition, they pay very little tax on the enormous increased value of their assets, which we gave them for the most part, or on the huge rental revenues they generate for themselves.

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