Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree completely with what Senator Buttimer has just said about FDI and Taiwan. In today's papers, I noticed that the Taiwanese foreign minister has asked for free countries across the world to show solidarity with them, which is so sad, because I visited the country recently and I saw a free democracy working perfectly. The minister said that there was an imminent threat of invasion from the Chinese mainland to suppress the last remaining piece of Chinese territory on which there is a functioning democracy. I hope that the Irish Government begins to find some courage and begins to consider, not what butter exports to China may do for our economy, but what principle requires us to do, and that is to support small countries, which are functioning democracies, in the face of tyrannical neighbours.

This is Second Stage of the Finance Bill 2020, and I wish to make one point about the principle behind it. I know that the principles of the Finance Bill are hardly to be found easily because the Bill is usually a great agglomeration of specific measures with specific intent. This is the first major Finance Bill of this Government, and a large amount of its content, for example, taxation and postponement measures, is remedial in respect of the problems that the economy is currently facing.

When one flies to London, in times when it is easy to do so, somewhere over Liverpool one gets the impression that the plane is beginning its descent into Heathrow Airport. Similarly, in politics, the Government is getting fairly close to that point already. Quite soon, the Government will be seeing the descent path rather than the ascent path, in respect of its lifespan. When the people of Ireland come to vote at the next general election, which could be three or four years away, but it will be upon us fairly soon, the most critical question which will face both the parties in government and the Government as a whole, will be the judgment of the people as to what they have done in respect of housing and the housing crisis in Ireland. It will be one of the most critical questions that determines where the votes of people under the ages of 40 and 30 go in the next election. It is probably going to be the critical factor that determines whether the present opinion polls are borne out, or other scenarios come to pass.The reason that I feel impelled to say this on Second Stage of the Finance Bill 2020, is because the entire Government - and not just the Department of Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform - must take seriously the issue of home building and homeownership, and the whole question of the capacity of young Irish people to ever become the owners of their own homes, and not to be the tenants of foreign multinational real estate investment trusts, REITs, and the like. The Government must take this issue seriously and it must be seen to be doing so.

In today's newspapers there was another report on the fact that even if major steps are taken now, it may be two or three years before they have an effect. The voters of Ireland are not stupid, and if they see something happening which shows the prospect of a radical change, they may change their attitudes and their voting intentions. I would add that our society is becoming one in which the younger generation is being comparatively impoverished to the benefit of the generation to which I belong. Assets are devolving upwards in terms of age, and ownership and capital are going upwards in terms of age and outwards from Ireland to REITs, multinationals and vulture funds. If we want to change Ireland and to keep what is best about it in one respect, we must ensure that every Irish youngish family can aspire to owning its own home.

I wish to finish on this point. Although now is not the time to start a mini housing boom, now is the time for the Government, through the taxation system, to reassert the values that have characterised Ireland for at least half a century, which include, in particular, that everyone can and should aspire to the ownership of their own home, and to have a real stake in the capital wealth of their country. I want to say, in that context, that unless this Government faces up to that issue - and facing up to that involves facing down the conservatism of the Custom House, and I will repeat that: facing down the conservatism and ineptitude of the Custom House - it is in danger of losing, not simply control over the political future of the country, but a large measure of democracy itself, to populists who will exploit the weakness.