It is very disappointing to again see the Minister's failure to support a measure which could help the housing crisis. I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Doherty for bringing forward the motion. Unfortunately, it is one of many areas where we are seeing the Government claiming that its policies are being developed to promote affordable housing and to promote delivery of housing but, in fact, they are, what I think describes it very accurately, "designed to fail". The Minister had no interest in banning or stopping institutional investors from buying up properties, or buying up what they actually are, namely, homes, because when they were introduced, the measures to restrict the bulk purchase of homes did not apply to apartments, and it is in the countermotion. They were fundamentally flawed from the outset because a huge part of our housing system is being excluded from the measures the Minister is claiming are there to restrict the bulk purchase of homes. Indeed, the guidelines set it out very clearly. When the measures designed to prohibit the bulk buying of houses and duplexes were introduced in 2021, the Department of housing guidelines stated that apartments were not included in this measure. The Minister talks about homes. He is not talking about homes but is only talking about one part of the housing market. Apartments, which are the main type of housing being built in my constituency, across Dublin, in Cork and increasingly in other parts of country, are completely excluded from this, so we have the ongoing bulk purchase of apartments by institutional investors. The reason is the Minister's housing policy has been completely based on institutional investors. I say the Minister's policy but I include Fine Gael in that because there is no real difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Effectively, they are the same party who are completely in bed with the institutional investors. The rental measures the Minister introduced last week were the epitome of turning his back on ordinary people in this country in favour of large corporate investors. The Minister said there is no real concern about this issue of institutional investors and asked what our concern is about this. Does the Minister know how many private rental homes are now owned by institutional landlords in Dublin? Over one in five of all rental properties in Dublin is now owned by big corporate landlords. Why is that a problem? The Minister might be familiar with the economic concept of oligopolies, which are, essentially, where markets can be controlled by a small number of players. In some parts of Dublin, we know this goes as high as 50%. The problem is not only the purchasing of homes; it is then what they are doing with that bulk purchase. It is controlling the market to set the very market rents. The Minister has changed the policy to allow them to do so. They can control the market and set the rent. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have utterly transformed our housing system in a detrimental way by rolling out the red carpet for institutional investors and by allowing them to continue to buy up properties. They see no problem with it. They are blinded to the negative downsides of this and the problem. These funds are not here to build affordable housing. As I have called them previously, they are vampire funds. They are not only vulture funds. Vultures come in, eat the carcasses and hang around for a bit, which the former Minister, Michael Noonan, spoke about. However, what vampire funds are here for is to keep sucking the blood from generation after generation, extracting the rent from them. The Minister is part of facilitating generations in this country who will have their lives destroyed struggling to pay rent to foreign institutional funds. He has turned the nature of our housing market on its head from when Fianna Fáil was supposedly the party standing up for the homeowner, for the middle people and for people to be able to buy their property. Fianna Fáil has turned it on its head and it does not realise how captured it has become. The Minister does not realise it because he is deluding himself about a policy that is about allowing rents rise for renters-tenants. These are the people who fought for and founded this State. The Minister is allowing institutional investors to essentially charge whatever rent they want to people and force them to pay. It is absolutely incredible that he is doing this and I am convinced he is completely captured by them. He does not even accept basic economic arguments as to why it is completely ludicrous to allow rents rise for a supply of housing that will never bring down rents unless we have an economic crash. Under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, home ownership among younger generations has collapsed. Some 40% of adults aged 25 to 34, or over half a million, are still living with their parents. In Finland and Denmark, it is just 4% and in Sweden, it is just 8% because these Nordic social democracies treat housing as a social good. The Government has a fundamental problem. It is building its housing policy around treating housing as an investment asset for global financial funds. There is a contradiction at the heart of its housing policy. It cannot be a public good, a social good, a human right on the one hand, and an asset that is essentially there to be sweated on the other. There is a problem, as the Minister has seen, at what point they get enough. They never get enough. This is why we have to treat housing as a human right. We will bring forward a Bill to treat housing as a human right, which the Government has failed to do and is at the core of the failure of its housing policies. Regarding affordable housing, and I remember highlighting this for several years, the other thing that happens when policy is driven by ensuring housing is viable, which is essentially profitable to the market, the market being institutional investors in this case, the Government fails to prioritise other policies. Affordable housing is key and institutional investors made it very clear for several years that they do not want to see a significant delivery of affordable housing in this country. Why do they not want to see it? What was the biggest risk they identified? Institutional investors identified very clearly that the biggest risk to their model is an alternative such as affordable housing where people do not have to pay these rents. If people had a choice, would they pay the rents? They absolutely would not. What do we see from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael? Absolutely pathetic delivery of affordable housing. In 2024, for example, the total local authority affordable purchase houses delivered was 772. Dublin City Council, in my own constituency, delivered 12 local authority affordable purchase homes.; Donegal County Council, not one; Galway City Council, not one; Kerry County Council, not one; Kildare County Council, not one; Offaly, Roscommon and Sligo county councils, not one. I only have the figures for the first three quarters of 2025. Dublin City Council went from 12 to none. Donegal County Council still did not deliver one affordable home. Deputy Doherty is lacking in affordable housing there. Similarly, Galway City Council provided eight affordable purchase homes. Leitrim had none, Kilkenny had none, Louth had 26, Meath had six and Monaghan had none. We can go through it county after county. The Government has seriously said, "We will deliver affordable purchase homes on a major scale through local authorities." No, it has not. I was at a housing committee meeting earlier. I do not know whether the Minister or his advisers were turned into it but it was frustrating and strangely inspiring. We had presentations from representatives of the community land trust organisations and community housing organisations, such as Ó Cualann and others, who discussed the potential for community and co-operative affordable housing. They pointed out that one fifth of the housing in countries such Norway, Sweden and Denmark is different forms of community-led, co-operative housing, which really works to counterbalance the market. For the past 20 years in Ireland, how many community-led, affordable, co-operative-type homes have we built? It has been 150, through Ó Cualann. Indeed, I tabled a parliamentary question directly to the Minister on what Government's policy on co-operative and community-led housing was and he replied that there is no policy. That sums it all up really. We have a potential model to deliver genuinely affordable, community-led housing and what has Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael done with it? Absolutely nothing. It is not even in the Minister's housing plan. He says the Opposition does not come forward with solutions. We have come forward with multiple solutions. We outlined the State savings scheme, for example, a year ago. Where is it? There has been literally nothing moved on it. There is €166 billion sitting there and the Tánaiste is basically going to hand it over to financial markets for people to roll the dice in the casino of the stock market and see if they will make their money instead of using it to guarantee a return to them risk-free. The State would guarantee it and the Minister could build tens of thousands of affordable homes but his boss, the Taoiseach, says, "Cannot do that, it takes too long." Of course it takes too long if you sit on your hands and do not do it. The Minister will be back next year saying, "You have no solutions. It takes too long to set up a State construction company. It takes too long to set up funding", but what does not take long is to jack up the rents for the institutional investors. No, he can do that overnight. What did not take long was guaranteeing the banks and bailing them out in 2008 and throwing this entire society under a bus. That could be done overnight but when it comes to emergency measures to ban families from being made homeless, the Government cannot do that. When it comes to a State construction company, it is a bit complicated, it takes a bit of time and is a bit of a risk. A savings scheme that could funnel billions of euro into affordable housing takes too long and the Government is not able to do that. Of course, it is only interested in certain solutions; the ones that keep the market going. That is where its housing plans are creating continual misery and will not work.

Sentiment score: -0.03