(Dublin West): The phenomenon whereby 20 to 50 per cent of new housing units coming on to the market are being purchased not by people wishing to live in them but by people planning to rent them at exorbitant rents has been recently highlighted. A variant of that speculation in the housing market is that speculators have been turning their attention to local authority estates. Typical of how this works is that so-called investors, usually from leafy suburbs, purchase houses for sale in local authority areas. They then rent them at exorbitant rents to people who cannot afford to buy their own homes and who are sometimes also on the local authority housing waiting list.
More often than not, the exorbitant rents charged by those from outside who have purchased these homes are being heavily subsidised in the case of Dublin by the Eastern Health Board. This amounts to insidious speculation in the housing market. The result is to push the price of homes in these estates way beyond the reach of young adult members of families happily settled in these estates who wish to purchase homes and live beside their parents or siblings. These young adults find themselves priced out of contention and out of any hope of purchasing a home in their local community or at all.
It adds insult to injury that taxpayers' money is funding this aspect of speculation. I understand that last year the health boards paid a massive £80 million in rent subsidies. Rented homes are obviously needed by those who have been left in the lurch by successive Governments who have not given local authorities the funds to build enough local authority housing. The fact that these taxpayer subsidies in such huge amounts go to swell the profits of the property speculators, the bankers and the building societies is nothing short of a scandal.
In Sheepmoor, a small local authority housing estate in Mulhuddart, I know of three houses on the one road which have been bought in the past few years by one family from a leafy and salubrious suburb. These houses are rented and, to my knowledge, the Eastern Health Board is subsidising the rent.
Speculators who purchase homes for investment in local authority areas and who live outside those areas, generally in comfortable circumstances, are parasites. They benefit from misery and, in turn, cause more misery by pushing the possibility of a home and a shelter beyond the reach of those who desperately need it. Successive Governments have allowed this situation to persist and have allowed speculators to run riot. First, the failure to have an emergency programme of house building in response to the suffering on the housing list is creating a situation where rents are going through the roof. Second, the carte blanche given to landowners and speculators to charge any price for building on land rezoned for housing is an outrage. Third, the total refusal and failure of successive Governments to halt the obscene profiteering in the new housing market is allowing this kind of speculation to thrive.
I demand, as a representative of working class people, some of whom are unemployed, others who are PAYE workers, that the Government take action to halt the speculation and profiteering, that this most human need for shelter and for a reasonably comfortable home is taken in hand and that the speculation and abuse is rooted out so that all people can afford to live in the comfort they deserve. That is hardly too much to ask.
