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

The issue of vulture funds snapping up family homes across this State is an absolute shame on this Government, just as it is a shame that over 4,000 children were in homeless accommodation over the Christmas period. The fact that this has not been mentioned every single day by Government Ministers in this Dáil since it returned is utterly shameful.

Today, I was interested to hear the Taoiseach say he regrets that vulture funds are snapping up family homes. When one listens to those on the Government benches, one would almost think that they are not in government, and that they do not have the power to make changes to make lives better for ordinary families and workers. I remind the Minister that the Government does have such power. Deputy Varadkar is the Taoiseach and Deputy O'Brien is the Minister for housing. If they are not happy about it, they can do something about it. The only reason the Minister moved on this in 2021 was that there was public pressure and the Opposition was putting pressure on the Government.

Last week, the Minister would have seen the announcement by the Minister, Deputy Harris, on student accommodation. The reality is that the announcement, which was made in DCU, was no more than a re-announcement. The student union was wise to the fact and clearly stated the facts in that regard. I will explain what was not included in that re-announcement. The Minister failed to mention the number of vulture funds which have snapped up purpose-built student accommodation. The accommodation funded by these vulture funds is simply and utterly pricing many students and young people out of access to third level education. We have seen in Galway, Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Carlow that purpose-built accommodation is totally out of the reach of ordinary students. We see that students are being priced out of the market when they look for a place to stay in order to access third level education. The Minister is the Minister for housing, so he needs to do something about it.

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