Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Thank you, a Chathaoirligh. You grabbed me just as I managed to choke on myself.

I wish to raise my concern about the purchase of properties by institutional investors in Maynooth. A total of 112 houses were bought there. It is a concern not only when it comes to suburban houses but to apartments as well.The Business Postedition published yesterday, for example, identified some of the institutional investors buying up apartments in the city. Union Investment bought 435 apartments in Ashtown. Aberdeen Standard Investments spent €20 million buying apartments in Smithfield. Avestus Capital Partners bought 120 apartments in Santry. In my area, on the Player Wills site, in Dublin 8, 132 build-to-rent apartments are being built and applied for, none of which people, including first-time buyers, will be able to buy. Since 2018, planning permission has been granted for more than 10,000 build-to-rent homes within the Dublin City Council area alone, and those figures come from Dublin City Council's press office. The Government has said it will deal with the issue of institutional investors buying up homes but it is talking about the suburbs. For some reason it thinks that people who live in the city and people who want to live in apartments do not count and that they will have to pay high rents for the rest of their lives. We really need to take a look at our housing policy overall and how we have created incentives for large financial institutions to make money off people's housing need, as opposed to putting forward housing as a human right, in particular when it comes to single people trying to access housing. When we hear Government policy refer to housing, we hear simply about what people on dual incomes can afford; we do not hear about the 400,000 single people in this country who want to be able to afford a safe, secure home to buy or rent affordably over the long term. We have to tackle the emergence of the dominance of the build-to-rent sector in Ireland or else there will be long-term societal consequences. At Clancy Quay, in my area, four fifths of the apartments are empty. We have to look at making the city and apartment living as sustainable and as low-cost, as we are looking to take action on the suburbs.