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

All across the House. The vast majority of the landlords are on the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael side and among the Independents who voted with the Government. If those landlords absented themselves tonight, as they should, and said it is too much to do with them, will impact their income and that it is clearly inappropriate for them to vote, there is every chance this Bill would pass.

It is worth looking at who these landlords are. Rory Hearne did very good work recently outlining the reality of these corporate landlords. IRES REIT, the largest private landlord in Ireland, owns close to 4,000 homes. US property corporate Kennedy Wilson owns close to 3,300 rental apartments. Irish property investor Urbeo is developing build-to-rent units, advertised as studio units, in Citywest in my constituency for €1,500 per month and two-bed apartments for €2,000 per month. US fund Greystar pre-bought 342 apartments being built in Griffith Avenue and advertises for a one-bed at €2,140. Rory Hearne also cites CSO data on new-build activity in Dublin in the first three months of this year showing that 1,151 newly built units were sold. Of these, first-time buyers bought just 217, or 19%. Non-household purchasers, overwhelmingly investor funds and REITs, bought 726, or 63% of all new builds in Dublin in the first quarter of 2022.

These corporations are getting massive public funds. IRES REIT got €8.7 million in rental income from the State via HAP in the first half of 2021. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have turned the Irish State into a vast funnel through which it can direct public moneys to landlords.

The Housing for All plan is completely dependent on the private market and on global investor vulture funds in particular. Of the €12 billion a year required to build the planned 33,000 homes each year, €10 billion will come from private capital sources. Of this, the "majority will be required from international sources", coming from well-established investors. The private market and investors are to provide 83% of new homes, with the State playing a small role and providing less than one fifth of all new builds. This encapsulates the disaster of the for-profit market and the commodity-driven approach to the housing crisis, which is why the crisis gets worse and worse day by day, week by week and month by month.

I presume we will hit the Government bingo later on and that the Minister of State will say this is unconstitutional as it interferes with the right to private property. We dispute that. We think the Government should do this and should then defend the case in the Supreme Court if that is where it goes. Even if the Government is right, that is precisely why we have introduced a Bill to insert the right to housing into the Constitution. We think the vast majority of people out there would agree that the right of ordinary people to housing comes before the supposed right of vulture funds, cuckoo funds and others to maximise their profits.

The Government won the confidence motion last night but I still do not think it has the confidence of ordinary people. As the slogan of the Arab Spring goes, what the Parliament does the streets can undo. This is now a weak Government. It is a Government that can be pressured and pushed from below if we manage to build a cost-of-living and housing movement like we did with the water charges. Such a movement, which will be holding a protest at 5 o'clock today in front of the Dáil and a major national protest on Saturday, 24 September, can force concessions out of this Government. At a certain time it will bring this Government down and open the possibility of a Government that does not govern in the interests of the big corporate landlords but instead in the interests of ordinary renters.

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