Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Again it is another failure. Bulk buying like this creates, in effect, a cartel. They are coming into an area, bulk buying the houses and creating a cartel, and then they dictate the prices for the area. They are doing it all in prime locations. If a company in the State is building a housing estate, it must have 30% for social housing. When we look at the scenario where houses are being bought up, however, there has only been an increase in stamp duty from 10% to 15%. The only way we can stop this is to hit them and hit them deep so that first-time buyers get the first opportunity to get those houses in those areas. Otherwise, we are pushing people into other areas that are not prime locations, which could be closed for business or closed for transport. We are actually creating a cartel if we do not send a clear message to these funds. Large companies are coming to this country with investments and to build factories but they are actually buying land themselves to build houses for themselves in their own companies. The cartel crowd have already taken an awful lot of properties from people who were suffering and who could not pay different mortgages through whatever downturns we had, and now they are coming in and doing it to us a second time. This has to stop.

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