Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This Government has been in office for nearly four years. The housing crisis is getting worse under the Government, as we heard Deputy Ó Broin outline. Of that there is no question. If soaring rents and rising house prices were not enough for struggling homebuyers to contend with, they are now forced to compete with investment funds that have more financial power than they could ever hope to have. It is a competition they simply cannot win because the rules of the game are rigged against them.

Two weeks ago we learned of an investment fund that snapped up 85% of an entire housing development in Balgriffin, Dublin 17. These were 46 homes that should have been available for workers and families to buy, to live in and to call their own. Instead, what is happening? They are being rented out by an investment fund for more than €3,100 per month. Of course, what happened in Belcamp Manor was not a surprise to us, because it is Government policy. That is the reality of it. The Minister can huff and puff all he wants, but he knows that it is Government policy.

For many years, Sinn Féin has been raising the issue of investment funds snapping up homes from under the feet of struggling homebuyers. The issue sparked outrage in 2021 when it was revealed that an investment fund had attempted to buy 135 homes at Mullen Park in Maynooth. In response to those events, the housing Minister said we needed to ensure that did not happen and that we would not have first-time buyers competing against large investment funds. He said it was not a situation that anyone could stand over nor indeed that he, as housing Minister, could stand over. This was more huff and more bluff from the Minister for housing because, as we know, it was feigned outrage from a Government which failed to take the necessary action. How do we know that? We warned the Government that the 10% stamp duty it was introducing was simply designed to fail because investment funds would continue to snap up family homes which should be available to first-time purchasers or other purchasers to buy. What has happened since? The Department of Finance told me last week that funds have snapped up 1,200 homes and have paid the 10% stamp duty charge. Some 700 of those homes were in the Minister's city, the capital city of Dublin. The funds have not just got their claws into homes in this city; they are buying up and bulk purchasing in Cork, Carlow, Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, Offaly, Roscommon, Galway, Limerick and Westmeath. That is where they have got their claws in. The Minister then tells us that his measures are working.

As bad as it is that 1,200 properties were bought up and the 10% stamp duty was paid, we know that the funds are buying up far more than that because the Central Statistics Office told us that institutional investors bought up nearly 6,000 homes in 2022. That is the last year for which the office has data. That is 6,000 homes in one year. The Minister stood here last week and said that investor or institutional funds are only buying 1% of the market. If 6,000 homes were sold in this way in 2022, it means that one out of every ten homes is being bought by institutional investors. Some 2,053 of them were actual houses. That is 31% higher than the year before the Government brought in the measure and told us it was going to stop this practice. The Minister stood there and said he could not stand over this practice, but what is the result? The result is that more homes than ever are being bought by vulture funds. More apartments than ever are being bought by vulture funds. More existing homes and more new homes than ever are being bought by these institutional investors. This shows us clearly that the Government is on the side of these investment funds. That is the reality.

It also raises the question of why stamp duty was paid in respect of just 395 of those purchases. Many of them were purchasing less than ten in a given year and getting around it in that way. The reality is that we on this side of the House know which side we are on. We are very clear that we are on the side of ordinary families. We do not stand over the fact that one in ten purchases is being made by institutional investors. These homes should be available on the market for first-time buyers and other struggling purchasers. When we consider the overall approach to the housing crisis of this Government, it is no wonder we have the scandal whereby 13,500 people, including 4,100 children, are now reported as homeless and in emergency accommodation. It is a stain on the consciousness of this country that any child should be without a place they can call home. This is not the Republic we want to build.

The motion today is about concrete action to end the bulk purchase by investment funds of homes which should be available for families to buy, to accelerate the delivery of social and affordable homes, to reintroduce the ban on no-fault evictions and to change Government policy. That is only likely to happen when we have a new government which has ordinary people's interests at heart.

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