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

The decision to waive levies for developers is a disgraceful recycling of an already failed policy.

Does the Taoiseach not remember LIHAF, which involved subsidies to developers to build infrastructure and was supposed to deliver affordable housing? Within weeks of LIHAF being introduced, the requirement to get 40% back in affordable housing was dropped and we got virtually nothing in terms of affordable housing but millions went into paying for the infrastructure from which developers profited and they are going to profit again.

Instead of giving it away to developers, what the Government could do with these big budget surpluses is buy up the newly completed developments out there where currently we are only going to get 10% or in a few cases 20% and the rest will be rented or sold at astronomical prices. If the State used the revenues it has on a once-off basis to buy those properties, we could rent and sell them at affordable levels and get the revenue back in the long run from the rental income we would get. That would be a sound use of the additional funding we have available and we could introduce "use it or lose it" measures for developers and speculators sitting on planning permissions that they are drip feeding.

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