Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Honest to God. To be generous to the Minister of State, the brass neck award goes to him. He is the Minister of State and his is the party that wrecked the bloody economy, that threw thousands of families into negative equity and ruined their lives. Many of them had to get on planes because of what his party did in the housing crisis. He sits there with a brass neck and tries to lecture me because we do not believe it is right that somebody has to earn €127,000 to buy a house in this city. We do not believe it is right that since Fianna Fáil took office in a Government with Fine Gael and the Greens four years ago, that house prices have gone up by 28%. We do not believe it is right that 21,000 of our young people left last year to go to Australia because they do not see a future here. We make no apologies and we will take no lectures from the Minister of State. He stood there and told us the Government's policy was working. Does he genuinely believe what comes out of his mouth? Maybe that is the truth. It is working, because it is definitely working for the vulture funds. The Government keeps trotting out this spin and I do not know whether it believes it, that it is 2% of the overall housing market and all the rest.

First of all, it exempted apartments from this tax. The whole figure of completions cannot be used when that includes apartments. Most of what is happening in terms of vulture funds buying up properties is happening in Dublin. Does the Minister of State accept that is happening in the capital? Belcamp Manor was one example of 46 houses. We know the name and where it is but multiple Belcamp Manors happened last year, 623 houses were bought by vulture funds in this city and beyond. Is that 2% of the overall market? No it is not. What does the CSO tell us happened in Dublin last year? It tells us that 70% of completions in the first nine months were apartments. That equates to 5,861 which means vulture funds have free rein to buy every single apartment they want in Dublin, and that is what is happening. They are picking off all the apartments in Dublin because the Government has ensured there are no planning restrictions and no stamp duty restrictions. Some 70% of all houses in the first nine months of the year had no restrictions whatsoever for vulture funds. What is left for the vultures to pick on is the other 30%, 2,441 homes completed in Dublin in the first nine months of last year. Some of them were social housing, some were Part V housing, so it is not even that amount. What did the vultures do? They bought 623. The Minister of State tells us the Government's plan is working. They went in and swept up a huge number of houses in Dublin. It is a massive percentage of what is available for ordinary people to purchase on the market here in Dublin. It is in the region of 20%. That is the reality of it. Yet the Minister of State, with a straight face, says that his plan is working. His plan is working, because if he heard what I said earlier, one of the leading wealth funds told its investors that the Government's policy is designed to support institutional investors to the detriment of ordinary purchasers.

The Minister of State says he stands for home ownership. Home ownership has collapsed under his Government. It is a pipe dream for people in Dublin because vulture funds are picking the apartments, which they have free rein to do. In terms of the houses which we were told vulture funds were going to be stopped from bulk purchasing houses in Dublin, they have been allowed to swoop in. We said the 10% tax would be too low, that it would not deter them. The proof is here now that it is simply not working. The Minister of State has an option and every Deputy in this House has a decision to make. It is a very simple decision: whose side are you bloody on? The Government is on the side of the vultures. It tells us its plan is working. It is happy with the fact that the vultures were able to buy 1,205 properties, houses, not apartments. In Dublin houses are only 30% of the completion figure and the Government is happy with that.

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