Paul Murphy: Calls to Expropriate Corporate Landlords

Thanks, Chair. Yesterday, when there was questions about this at Leaders Questions, the Taoiseach said, if we pass this bill to reduce rents for ordinary people, there will be no landlords left in Ireland. Across the country, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people who are struggling to pay 2,000, 2,500 euros in rent a year, others who are living at home, well into their late 20s, well into their 30s, because they can't afford to get out to rent, what those people are thinking is, Taoiseach, don't threaten us with a good time. It was a comment that encapsulated in one sentence the ideology and the approach of the government in relation to housing. That the only conceivable way to provide homes for people is not to consider housing as a basic right, but as a commodity that must be provided for profit in the market. That is the essence of the government's approach to housing. So, we have to incentivise developers to build homes for profit by shoveling public money at them, and we have to incentivise landlords to provide the service that landlords provide, by not saying that rents should be linked to what people can afford to pay, but saying that landlords are free to charge whatever the market says that they can get away with. That is the essence of what the government's approach is, but it begs the question, what service do landlords provide? What wealth do landlords produce in this economy? What added benefit is created by having a class of landlords? Nothing. That is the truth. There is no added benefit by having this layer of corporate landlords in our society. The truth is that landlords, big corporate landlords, as a class, are parasitical on the economy. They are taking money out of the economy, generated by workers creating wealth, and keeping it to themselves. A billion euros a year, almost, in various state supports, public money going into the pockets of landlords. Billions of euros of ordinary workers going into the pockets of landlords. And that amount of money has exploded over the course of the last ten years. So let's say, hypothetically, that the Taoiseach is right. Let's say that we pass a law to say that actually rent should be at a level that people can afford to pay. A very radical idea. And let's say the Taoiseach's nightmare scenario is correct, and every landlord in the country leaves the market. What are they going to do? They'll pack up the apartments into their bags? Off to wherever they go? Strap the houses to their backs? Off to America, Germany, where the corporate landlords are based? No, they can't take their properties with them. The key point is what will happen to the tenants. But the state can say, the state should say, that for small landlords, we have no problem with small landlords. But if small landlords cannot afford to operate on the basis of renters being able to afford to rent and not be crucified, OK, we understand the state should simply agree to buy those homes at market rate from the small landlords who want to get out and turn that into public housing, keeping the tenants in situ. There you go. No crisis. And when it comes to the corporate landlords, to the Ires, Reits, the Kennedy, Wilsons and the rest of them, we think we should follow the example of what the people in Berlin voted to do. Expropriate them. Nationalise them. They're not providing any social use for ordinary people. None whatsoever. We should take them into public ownership. We should turn them into public housing, again, on the basis of affordable rents and create a universal model of public housing where housing is not seen and treated as a commodity for profit but instead as a basic right for people. That's the difference of approach between us, thinking about the interests of ordinary people and the government saying we have to shape the market in such a way to enable these people to make as much profit as is possible. And of course, there is a happy coincidence between the ideology of the government and the self-interest of the class of landlords that the government represents and the landlords themselves within the government and in the back benches of the government. Their interests all happens to coincide. Because this isn't just a government for landlords. In fact, it's a government by landlords. Last night, the government won on the motion of confidence by 19 votes. By my calculation, if the landlords in this house had not been voting, the government would have lost that vote. The same presumably will apply when we vote on this rent reduction bill this evening. If the landlords in this house absented themselves, said as they should, well, I can't possibly vote on this because this is voting about whether my... From the opposition? All across the house, you'll find that the vast majority of the landlords are on the Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael side and in some of the independents who voted with the government. If those landlords, as they should, absented themselves tonight and said, this is too much to do with me, this will impact my income, clearly it's inappropriate for me to vote, well then, there's every chance this rent reduction bill would pass. I think it's worth looking at who these landlords are in reality. So Rory Hearn did very good work recently outlining the reality of these corporate landlords. So Ires Reith, the largest private landlord in Ireland, owns close to 4,000 homes. U.S. property corporate Kennedy Wilson owns close to 3,300 rental apartments. Irish property investor Urbeo is developing bill-to-rent units, advertising a studio in City West, in my own constituency, for 1,500 euros a month, a two-bed apartment for 2,000 euros a month. U.S. fund Greystar, pre-bought 342 apartments, currently being built in Griffith Avenue, advertised for a one-bed at 2,140. Rory Hearn also shows that CSO data, a new build activity for Dublin, in the first three years of this year, shows that 1,151 newly built units were sold. Of these, first-time buyers bought just 217, 19% of them. Non-household purchasers, overwhelmingly investor funds and REITs, bought 726, 63% of all new builds in Dublin in the first quarter of 2022. And these people, these corporations, are getting massive public funds. IRS REITs got 8.7 million in rental income from the state, via HAP in the first half of 2021. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have turned the Irish state into a vast funnel through which it can direct public monies to landlords. The Housing for All plan is completely dependent on the private market, and on global investor vulture funds in particular. Of the 12 billion euros a year required to build the plan 33,000 homes each year, 10 billion of it will come from private capital sources. Of this, I quote, the majority will be required from international sources, coming from well-established investors. So the private market and investors are to provide 83% of new homes, with the state playing a small role, less than one-fifth of all new building. Again, it encapsulates the disaster of the for-profit, market, commodity-driven approach to the housing crisis, which is why the crisis gets worse and worse and worse, day by day, week by week, month by month. I presume, I think we can hit the government bingo later on, that you will say this is unconstitutional. It's an interference with the right to private property. We dispute that. We think the government should do it. The government should then defend the case in the Supreme Court, if that's where it goes. But even if we say you're right, okay, well, that's precisely why we have a bill to insert the right to housing into the Constitution. Because we think the vast majority of people out there would agree that the right of ordinary people to housing comes before the supposed right of vulture funds, of cuckoo funds and others to maximise their profits. The final point I want to make is that, obviously, the government won the confidence motion last night. I still don't think that they have the confidence of ordinary people. And as the slogan of the Arab Spring goes, what the parliament does, the streets can undo. This is now a weak government. It's a government that can be pressured and pushed from below if we manage to build a cost of living and housing movement like we did with the water charges. Such a movement, which has a protest at five o'clock in front of the Dáil today, and a major national protest on Saturday, September 24th, can force concessions out of this government and will, at a certain time, bring this government down and open the possibility of a government that does not govern in the interests of the big corporate landlords, but instead in the interests of ordinary renters. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.