Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)

In this budget, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael once again showed that they put generation rent behind the developers and investor funds, which were completely prioritised. During the election campaign, they never said that their big idea was going to be a tax-cut giveaway of up to €500 million a year to wealthy developers and funds. Today, the Government's developer VAT cut has been torn apart by none other than its own Parliamentary Budget Office over a lack of evidence and the fact that developers that have already started building thousands of apartments will get this windfall. This is utterly damning. Billions of euro are going to be given to developers and investors for apartments that are already being built, with no affordability obligations. Billions are going to be given to build apartments that no one will be able to afford to buy or rent. It is clear that, when the lobbyists came in and said "Jump", the Government asked "How high?" because it is unwilling to take the radical action needed to address this housing crisis. Why will it not ban evictions to stop children being made homeless? Why will it not implement the radical action we suggested in our alternative budget? The reason is the Government has been captured by the lobbyists of the investor funds and developers and is unwilling to take that radical action, so it will leave 5,000 children homeless and give billions to developers and investment funds. The Government's members should be ashamed of themselves.

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