Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Eight years ago, the CEO of IRES REIT, one of the big vulture funds, said, "We've never seen rental increases like this in any jurisdiction that we're aware of", before adding: "I truly feel bad for the Irish people." That CEO has long retired, but I wonder what he would say if he was looking at rents today. Does the Minister of State know what the average rent was when the former CEO expressed that regret for the Irish people? It was €986 per month.

In Galway, rents are more than €1,980 per month. Is it any wonder that vulture funds are trying to bulk purchase homes that are normally for families to buy? The real wonder is why the Government is allowing them to do this.

I am from Mervue, a proud community in Galway. A lot of people who live in Mervue want to stay in that community and they want to be able to raise their families there. The reality is that the Government's policy is not letting them do that. We can take, for example, the Crown Square site, which is just beside our estate. It was to deliver 345 apartments but Galwegians cannot purchase these because they are build to rent properties. The other reality is that many people will not be able to afford to rent them because we know the kind of rents these funds charge. These are the consequences of the Government's actions. Never in the economic history of this State have so few created so much misery for so many people. It is not just people in Galway city who are affected but it is people across the State.

It is also students who are truly impacted by this accommodation policy because it impacts student accommodation as well. I heard the Minister, Deputy Harris, making big announcements yesterday but the reality is that a lot of those were reannouncements. He was telling us about some new three-point plan he had when it was essentially the rehashing of an old plan. Not only that, but that old plan was also reliant on vulture funds. Not many people realise that vulture funds provide almost the same number of student beds as the universities. In Dublin they provide more than Dublin City University, University College Dublin and Trinity College Dublin combined. That is completely pricing people out of third level education.

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