Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Sinn Féin quoted a paper from the Department of Finance. I was discourteous when Senators were speaking because I did not have the report to hand and wanted to get it so I could read out to Sinn Féin the conclusions of the report. I will not have papers from my Department being selectively quoted from to make arguments that the Department and I disagree with. The Senator quotes some points from the paper on institutional investors in the housing market but neglects to quote the conclusions from the paper. I will only pick one of them, which stated:

However, the paper acknowledges that such investors do play an increasingly important role in the private ... sector. While there may be a perception that institutional investors are purchasing large amounts of housing stock, the data in the paper show that their activity has been limited in the context of the overall housing market and largely confined to Dublin apartments.

The paper goes on to advise that institutional investment in apartments is likely to be the driving force behind a significant recent increase in the number of apartment units granted planning permission in Dublin. If the Senator is going to refer to a paper from my Department, please be aware that I may be aware of the conclusions in it and will make them in debate on these topics.

The Senator again asserts that IRES REIT either pays no tax or a low level of tax. In 2019, the total amount of tax that IRES REIT paid in Ireland was €71.98 million. There were issues in respect of taxation of it. In the years before that, it was lower than it should have been, but due to changes made in the Finance Act by me and my predecessor, the former Minister, Michael Noonan, the level of tax that IRES REIT pays in Ireland has gone up considerably. The debate about the role of these structures and funds in Ireland comes back to supply. I know these structures are complex and I know the language about taxable events and withholding tax does not lend itself easily to the kind of debates that we sometimes have in here and in the Dáil. If we want more homes to be built in Ireland, accompanied by the State directly building more homes itself, savings in our country and elsewhere have a role to play.

We need billions of euro per year of additional investment and more homes being built in our country. We need billions of euro to meet the needs of tenants who are worried about their rents in the future and of families of young workers who worry that they might not be able to own a home either now or in the years to come, regardless of how hard they work. To meet their needs, we need the Government to invest more, which is happening, as well as the private sector playing a role to accompany our efforts. That is what we are doing. We know how much we have to do and the effect it is having on our society, politics and living standards, but we are determined to make a difference and we will. What will not make a difference are simplistic arguments that infer that a State in the future will be able to do everything and there is no role at all for the private sector in meeting those needs.

Senator McDowell put forward arguments about the north inner city, which I will briefly address. I agree with Senator McDowell that Dublin City Council and other local authorities should have done more in recent years to try to meet the housing needs that we are discussing this evening. I am, however, sympathetic to the executive and the dilemma it faces. I will give the example of Sean McDermott Street, O'Devaney Gardens and Oscar Traynor Road. These homes should have been built years ago. One can look at what happened at O'Devaney Gardens. I remember being a Senator in this House in 2008. Residents from O'Devaney Gardens were sitting over in the Visitors Gallery, by the most bizarre and poor of luck, on the day that the project collapsed. Nearly 15 years after that event, the good news is that homes are being built. That bad news is that it is years later than it should have been. We had private accommodation, cost rental, and local authority housing playing a role in it. There are homes there that we believed it would be appropriate for people to be able to buy if they could afford to. Nothing happened with the project for years. It was ground down. The same thing happened on Oscar Traynor Road. There is hypocrisy in parties of the left coming in to castigate this Government, which knows what its responsibilities are, for not being able to meet housing needs while fighting the delivery of those homes tooth and nail in local authorities. For example, on Oscar Traynor Road, hundreds of homes that should now be built are not happening. It is relevant to where we are with this debate on housing this evening. This argument has to be made more regularly and with more force than it has been to date.

Regarding the institutional role that the city council can play, one reason that I am so supportive of the Land Development Agency is that we need to assemble land banks within our cities more quickly than we are at the moment, and we need to come up with a new body to do it. The Land Development Agency will do it. By doing that, I hope it will encourage local authorities to play a similar role. The north inner city needs to make much progress. The next time Senator McDowell is on his way to Broadstone, I suggest that he go a step beyond it, to Grangegorman, to see what is happening there. A magnificent project has been delivered by the local authority, the National Transport Authority, NTA, and Grangegorman Development Agency. That is the vision for integrated development and proper planning that I want to see replicated all over the country. There is an extraordinary higher level institution and place of learning that benefits all. It took a long time to do but that is what can be done and we need to do the same with housing.