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

-----says there are 70,000 planning permissions but the applicants are sitting on them. As soon as someone gets a planning permission, the value of the property goes up and then he or she sits on it for ten years. The Government allows that as well. When will it do something about this?

My last point is topical. He now has a €10 billion surplus. I have a very simple proposal. That money will have to be put somewhere. Whether it is with the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, or a fund or whatever it is, the money will be invested somewhere. That is what happens to money. It does not sit somewhere; it gets invested. I propose the Government buys all the newly completed developments. At the moment, everything other than the very miserable amount of social and affordable housing the Government is delivering, will be rented out or sold at extortionate, unaffordable levels. I propose the Minister use that €10 billion. It would be a good, prudent one-off investment in stock that will deliver revenue to the Government and will help solve the housing crisis. It should buy all the newly completed property with those billions of euro.

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