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

Yesterday, when questioned about this at Leaders' Questions , the Taoiseach said if we passed this Bill to reduce rents for ordinary people, there would be no landlords left in Ireland. Across the country, thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people who are struggling to pay €2,000 or €2,500 of rent per month and others who live at home well into their late 20s or 30s because they cannot afford to rent are thinking "Taoiseach, don't threaten us with a good time". The Taoiseach's comment encapsulated in one sentence the ideology and approach of the Government to housing, which is that the only conceivable way to provide homes for people is not to consider housing as a basic right but as a commodity that must be provided for profit in the market. That is the essence of the Government's approach to housing. We have to incentivise developers to build homes for profit by shovelling public money at them and we have to incentivise landlords to provide the service they provide by not saying rents should be linked to what people can afford to pay but that landlords are free to charge whatever the market says they can get away with. That is the essence of the Government's approach.

It begs the question of what service landlords provide. What wealth do landlords produce in this economy? What added benefit is created by having a class of landlords? Nothing. That is the truth. There is no benefit in having this layer of corporate landlords in our society. Big corporate landlords, as a class, are parasitical on the economy. They take money generated by workers creating wealth out of the economy and keep it for themselves. Almost €1 billion per year in various State supports - public money - goes into the pockets of landlords. Billions of euro from ordinary workers go into the pockets of landlords, and that amount of money has exploded over the past ten years.

Let us say, hypothetically, that the Taoiseach is right and if we pass a law providing that rents should be at a level people can afford to pay, which is a very radical idea, the Taoiseach's nightmare scenario transpires and every landlord in the country leaves the market. What will they do? Will they pack up the apartments into their bags and go off to wherever they go? Will they strap the houses to their backs and go to America or Germany where the corporate landlords are based? They cannot take their properties with them.

The key point is what will happen to the tenants. We have no problem with small landlords but if small landlords cannot afford to operate on the basis of renters being able to afford to rent and not being crucified, then the State should agree to buy those homes at market rate from the small landlords who want to get out and turn that into public housing, keeping the tenants in situ.There you go - there is no longer a crisis. When it comes to corporate landlords, IRES REIT, Kennedy Wilson and the rest of them, we should follow the example of what the people in Berlin voted to do by expropriating and nationalising this housing. It does not provide any social use for ordinary people. We should take it into public ownership and turn it into public housing on the basis of affordable rents. We should create a universal model of public housing where housing is not treated as a commodity for profit but as a basic right for people. That is the difference of approach between us, thinking about the interests of ordinary people, and the Government, saying we have to shape the market in such a way as to enable these people to make as much profit as possible.

There is a happy coincidence between the ideology of the Government and the self-interest of the class of landlords it represents, including the landlords in the Government and on its backbenches. Their interests all happen to coincide. This is not just a Government for landlords; it is a Government by landlords. Last night, the Government won the motion of confidence by 19 votes. By my calculation, if the landlords of this House had not voted, the Government would have lost that vote. The same will presumably apply when we vote on this Rent Reduction Bill this evening. If the landlords in the House absented themselves and said, as they should, that they cannot vote on this because this is voting about whether-----

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