Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

A headline from RTÉ earlier this year stated, "Half-year profits and revenues at Glenveagh Properties soar". The company's revenues were up in the first six months of this year by 125% from the previous year, more than doubling from €152 million to €341 million. Gross profit in half a year was €66.8 million. Profits at Cairn Homes were €63 million in the first half of 2025. Yet, the Tánaiste wants to give them more. It is not enough that Glenveagh's profits go up by 125% and that Cairn, the other big builder - just to name the two largest and most profitable - is making eye-watering profits, with shareholders enjoying bonanzas year after year and executives enjoying absolutely obscene salaries. The Government wants to give them €340 million more.

I was just flicking through the prices they are charging for the houses they build.

A one-bedroom house by Glenveagh in Donabate is €345,000, a two-bed is €440,000, a three-bed is €480,000 and a four-bed is €700,000, with a similar picture in the rest of them. These are completely unaffordable for the vast majority of working people who go out and work hard but would be absolutely incapable with their own income to afford those kinds of prices. We are giving them a subsidy on already massive profits to deliver housing that no working people can afford. Does the Government honestly think that is justified and is a strategy to deal with the housing crisis? It begs the question as to whether Government is serious at all or whether this just reveals the truth that it is there to represent the interests of the property developers and the profits they want to make because that is the consistent story and, in my opinion, it is the dirty secret of the housing crisis that has persisted now for more than a decade. The only thing that explains Government's failure to deal with the housing crisis is that all along, its only interest was to ensure the profits of the speculators and the property developers. The vulture funds and hedge funds that got all the NAMA lands at discount prices, made massive profits, controlled the supply of housing and then sold it on to these gangs or gave them land - that should be the public land bank - which should be in public control and where we drive, in the public interest, the construction of housing.

In the area around Helsinki in Finland, one of the few places where they have improved the situation of the housing crisis, the land bank is completely controlled publicly. It does not mean there is no private building but it does mean the only housing that happens is housing which is actually going to contribute to addressing the housing crisis and the housing needs of the people and, therefore, it has seen homelessness go down. Whereas, we have seen homelessness go through the roof, every year worse than the last, with the vast majority of working people priced out of the market while the developers, hedge funds and landlords are making eye-watering profits.

Either it is incompetence on a scale that is simply staggering on the part of the Government or the truth is that what it is actually doing is very deliberately benefiting the profiteers at the expense of the people who are suffering. Under no circumstances can the Government justify saying companies making that level of profits need more profits to stimulate the situation and to be convinced to build. Government should not be in a situation where they have the State over a barrel because that is what they are doing. They say, "Do this for us" and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael jump to the tune. It is absolutely shocking.

If we controlled the land bank, stopped all the speculation and developed a State construction company and started to build on a not-for-profit basis, we could stop and solve the housing crisis. How do we know that? When this country had nothing in the thirties, forties and fifties, when it was an impoverished virtual third world country, we were able to build housing at affordable levels for working people in this country. How can we not do it now with record budget surplus? We can but the Government is having its policies dictated to it by the people who are profiteering from the housing misery. It is as simple as that.

It has got to stop. The fact the Government's Department of Finance, which the Tánaiste has entered into, has said in a report that on a no policy change basis, we are facing another 15 years of a housing crisis. It is unbelievable and yet Government is not proposing to change policy. It is proposing to continue with the policies and the priorities that have failed to address the housing crisis for 15 years and have caused the housing crisis. The Tánaiste's Department is now telling him the crisis is going to go on for another 15 years. It is unbelievable or it is totally believable if you understand the Government is simply doing what the speculators and profiteers want and has no interest whatsoever in the people rotting in emergency accommodation or in the lives, hopes and aspirations of young people and working people in this country who have been completely locked out of any hope of being able to afford the house prices these guys who are making obscene profits are charging when they control and manipulate the entire housing sector. It has got to stop. The young people and working people of this country cannot continue with this stuff.

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