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

I thank Deputy Cian O'Callaghan and the Social Democrats for bringing forward this important motion.

We are happy to support the idea of a punitive vacant homes tax to deal with an estimated 166,000 vacant properties, according to the CSO, that could be used to address the utter scandal of the housing crisis. Let me give an example that stares me in the face every day I go into my office in Dún Laoghaire. Directly across from my office is a multi-unit apartment complex called St. Helen's Court. It was owned by one vulture fund and then by another, which has spent the past four years persecuting the tenants in there. They have never done anything wrong. Many have left because of the stress; some are in court this Friday facing an enforcement order for an eviction that has been granted by the RTB, even though the tenants did nothing wrong. There are now 16 apartments in that block that have been fully refurbished for at least two years and have been empty for three to three and a half years. I have raised that case dozens of times in the House. To put it really sharply, this is criminal. The people who are willfully sitting on that property are part of an asset management company based in three townlands in County Donegal, but nobody can get a phone number or an address for them. It is very odd. I do not know how a company manages to have an address in three different townlands in Donegal. It has sat on that property for all this time, persecuting the remaining tenants.

What is it doing? It is just watching the value of that property clock up. It has probably clocked up by approximately 40% to 50% in value. It is profiting from sitting on empty property, simultaneously persecuting and trying to evict the tenants. Meanwhile, day after day, people are walking into my office directly across from this building saying they have nowhere to go or that they are in emergency accommodation. I have one woman who has been in emergency accommodation for four years. It is desperate. She is living with her child in one bedroom. Her job is to look after vulnerable children for Tusla, if that can be believed, but she is over the threshold and is not entitled to social housing. Across the road there are empty properties. It is disgusting and the Government does nothing about it.

There should be compulsory purchase of those properties immediately. We put pressure on the Government and the local authority to enter negotiations with that vulture fund but the Minister told me recently in a conversation that this fund does not seem to want to sell. It evicted the tenants on the basis that it was supposed to sell the property but the fund apparently does not want to sell now when the local authority is trying to buy it. When are we going to deal with this scandal? This is going on left right and centre. Greedy, ruthless people are sitting on empty properties watching the value of their assets go up while other people languish and rot. This includes children like those lovely children who just walked out of the Visitors Gallery. Some 4,000 people are languishing and having their mental health destroyed while sitting in emergency accommodation while tens of thousands of other families are faced with the possibility of eviction, yet these greedy, ruthless people are sitting on empty property and the Government allows it. It then has a vacant homes tax at 0.3%, which is a joke. These apartments are gathering more value in a week than that tax but the Government allows it. Why does it allow it? I cannot understand the reason other than the Government is dancing to the tune of investment funds such as this one because apparently we need these investors. According to the Government, they are somehow helping us with housing. They are not; they are just exploiting other people's misery. They see empty or derelict property, or planning permissions as I keep reporting. The Government goes on about people objecting to planning permissions. We have a massive surplus of planning permissions. The Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, which is the Government's own economic evaluation service-----

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