Paul Murphy accuses government of 'ramming through' housing bill

Chair, I'll be brief enough just to respond to some of what the Minister said. Although, firstly, I'll just note that you can see the impact of the guillotine. I mean, we're still on the First Amendment, and we're going to run out of debating time relatively soon. And when the Minister made the point, he said, we're not ramming it through, sure, we're not ramming it through. And his excuse for how we're not ramming it through is because he announced it last year, in August, I think, correct, yes, but that's precisely the point, is that you announced it last year, you announced the policy proposal last year, fine, that's absolutely right, but then we are literally debating it, we voted second stage just a few hours ago, we're debating committee, we're going to do committee, and remaining stages, now, in five hours, it's going to be guillotined, three weeks out from this actually being implemented. Yes, sorry, that is ramming it through. There'd be no ramming it through if you had brought in the legislation in September, October, and we'd debate it, and so on, you absolutely are ramming it through, just because you announced it a long time ago, and didn't bring forward the legislation so it could be scrutinised, so it could be amended, that precisely proves the point about you ramming it through, rather than disproving it. Second point I wanted to make, I did think it was interesting, the Minister admits that we currently have a situation of misery, you admit that, but you say that your bill is a way to avoid making that misery permanent. So just take the first part of that, first of all, we currently have a situation of misery, misery for renters, misery for people who are trying to buy their home, misery for homeless people, misery for half a million young people trapped at home. A system of misery has been very widely created, affecting very, very many people in terms of the housing system. How did we get here? Should we have a look at how we got here? If we're all accepting, if the government accepts that we have a situation of misery, if the opposition says we have a situation of misery, how did we get here? And of course, we got here with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but the key point, in a way, isn't that your parties are responsible for it, the key point is the policies that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael pursued have got us to this point. And the policies that were pursued, and I've been listening to the debate, and it's been set out in great detail, is moving away from the delivery of social housing at any scale. There has been an increase in recent years, but almost complete collapse. And then the market. The market will provide the market, the market, the market, incentivise landlords, developers to come into the market, make sure that they can make as much profit as they need to make. That's the essence of the system that's been approached, or the approach of the government. And that's what's got us to the point of housing misery. I always make the point, I remember back at the 2016 general election, homelessness, the housing crisis was emerging as a very significant issue, but that stayed with less than 5,000 people homeless. I remember then, later on, it was said that when you reach 10,000, that would be a breaking point, you know, that people will not stand going over 10,000. By 2020 general election, we were over 10,000. By 2024 general election, we were well over 15,000, and now we're on the trajectory to 20,000, which would be met at kind of a pretty quick and rapid pace if the government gets its way and manages to implement this approach. And that is the consequence of those housing policies, right? So one follows the other. Some people have gotten very, very rich in the meantime from that. It's massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few. But what's different about this government? What's different about this housing policy? What's different about what's in the bill? I mean, this is just supercharging the policies we've had up until now. It's not going in a different direction. It's going in the same direction that has got us to this point, but just going faster. And it's all this trickle-down idea that if we invite in these people and we make clear you can make loads of money if we give a windfall to I-RES REIT of 20 million euros, they'll invest more money because they think they'll be able to make more profits. And then, you know, in the long run, rents will come down. That's effectively what the government's, at least what the government says their position is. We're going to, yes, there's going to be pain in the short term, rents are going to rise for people, but the investment's going to come in and then in the long run we're going to have a better housing market. But this is like effectively what the government has been doing for the past 10 years, not at this scale, not at the speed of increases that the government is now introducing. And like the result is the misery that the minister admits that has been created. The minister also said, and it was ironic, the point about the social media clips, because the minister said the point that the government says all the time for the social media clips. They say it all the time for the social media clips and it's pushed out there just to say it so many times that people think there must be something to it. The minister said is that the opposition hasn't put forward any proposals, any alternatives. I don't know how you can say it. Like you've been listening to us, you might not agree with what's being put forward, but it's clear that the amendments themselves, like our amendments, which contain alternative proposals. You might not think the proposals will work, but there clearly are alternatives. Alternative positions have been raised repeatedly in the course of the debate, calling for a ban on economic evictions, which we know works. We know it doesn't stop homelessness, we know it doesn't stop people entering homelessness, but we know that it significantly slows it down. We know that because we've done it and when you get rid of it, the speed of people entering homelessness goes up even faster. We've said we want real rent controls, which reduce rents to affordable levels, and we've pointed to the need for state investment and state construction companies to build social and affordable homes. So it's just not very serious to say, oh, I haven't heard any alternative proposals, when we're literally debating amendments which have alternative proposals. But that is part of, like the government's approach on this issue, I think is like horrendously cynical. One part of it is to try and normalize the housing crisis, to make it like the health crisis, that in every opinion poll turns up as a significant issue. People when asked what's a big issue for you, the health crisis, but they've kind of normalized the idea that it's such a big crisis, it's a black hole, you can throw money at it, but you can never really resolve it, to try and neuter it kind of as a political issue. I think that's what successive Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael governments have done reasonably effectively on the issue of the health crisis. Effectively, the government's approach on the housing crisis is to do the same. It's just, except as normal, we're going to hit 20,000 people in emergency accommodation, we're going to go beyond that, except that people's rents are going to increase even faster, 3,000 euros or more of increases as a consequence of this bill. But that's just kind of the way it is. And then, of course, some elements of the government backed up by some very toxic parts of politics playing a very dirty game of blaming those not who are at the top, but instead blaming the most vulnerable people in our society, suggesting that asylum seekers are adding to people in emergency accommodation or whatever, stuff that's just factually inaccurate, but that is a very dirty trick designed to distract attention away from Fida Fáil Fínigal and away from those who actually benefit from the housing crisis. And then the other part of the government strategy is to suggest that there's no alternative, that nobody has any policies. Do you know what I mean? You can do whatever you want in terms of you can launch policies, you can write books, you can do any of those things, but you're still going to hear the government say that these people literally have no other ideas, you know? And that literally is what they say day in, day out and what goes on the social media clips is just to get the idea and there is no alternative. There is no alternative, there is no alternative, there is no alternative. That is the mantra that is kind of pushed at people and I think what is incumbent on us is to get the message across that there is an alternative and it starts from the opposite point of view. The government starts from the point of view of what will make landlords and developers happy. When they're speaking to the public they add on to that happy so that they close the viability gap which is this new kind of term that has entered politics just in the last year or so and has become the thing that to dress up the way of we want to make developers have even more profits than they currently have, we want institutional investors to have even more profits than they currently have but instead our starting point is like what will resolve the housing crisis? What will mean just the basic thing that people will be able to access affordable, quality, decent housing? Shouldn't be too much to ask in one of the richest countries in the world in 2026 but if you start from that standpoint you come up with a bill that points in the very opposite direction to what the government is doing in the main with this bill and you come up with things like the amendments that we're debating here today.