Paul Murphy
Dublin South-West · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“The Minister of State assured us we are bound by international law but then went on to talk about the fact that he wants to deploy troops outside the framework of international law. That is why the Government is getting rid of the triple lock. All the triple lock does is ensure that we only can send troops in line with international law.”
“The case for MetroLink south west is extremely strong. There are 350,000 people living between the Luas red and green lines. That is who will be served by this.”
“Hopefully the junior Minister will be able to clarify. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, said earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire, "The people I speak to do not like the fact that Russia has essentially removed, or will remove in the coming months, all our peacekeeping troops from UNIFIL".”
“I, too, want to ask about the senior Minister. This came up at the Dáil reform committee last week. It is very peculiar that a senior Minister is here and has answered previous questions on the triple lock today and then – no offence meant - we have the junior Minister answering these questions, which precisely prevents the continuation o…”
“Its defence is that we should not worry because the Government is only going to send them as part of an international force. I do not think anyone here thinks the Government is going to invade a country all by itself.”
“It is there in black and white in the programme for Government and the Government needs to live up to its commitment to do a new, properly independent feasibility study. I appeal to the Minister of State to ask the Minister for Transport to meet with the metro south west group which has been doing such excellent campaigning on this issue.”
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“When Fintan O'Toole very accurately and precisely skewered that and exposed the misinformation that Simon Harris was engaged in, and when that was then echoed and emphasised by some Opposition parties, the response by Simon Harris to this debate happening was to accuse us of shutting down debate. The debate is not just that you get to say whatever you want or that you get to throw out your dog-whistles and not be challenged on it. You will be challenged on it. The truth is that the Government does not want to significantly change aspects of our migration policy. If it did, it would bring forward those proposals. It wants to stick with the current migration policy, but add in some more elements of performative cruelty to dog-whistle, to scapegoat asylum seekers and to distract from its failures in government.”
“It was very strange yesterday on Leaders' Questions. I counted no fewer than seven times when Jack Chambers, stepping in for the Taoiseach, called for a debate on our migration policy. This is kind of the last refuge of the scoundrel. Rather than actually coming out and arguing for a position, they just say we need to have a debate about it, suggesting that somehow they are not able to have a debate. They are able to have a debate; they are the Ministers responsible for Government policy. It has become clear that what the Government wants is not a debate. What it wants is a free run to engage in dog-whistling and in scapegoating of asylum seekers and for that not to be challenged. Simon Harris was deliberately conflating migration numbers in general with a small number of asylum seekers who had not been deported.”
“The Minister of State spoke earlier about how the task forces are an integral part and they will not be excluded and so on, but the bottom line point is that they are being excluded from the reference group to support the implementation of the new national drugs strategy. Again, the people who are on the front line in the communities most affected by drug addiction are being left out of the vital conversations on shaping the national drugs strategy. Unfortunately, none of this augurs well for an approach that takes the words "health led" seriously and actually follows that up with decriminalisation and funding for all of our drug services.”
“Earlier, the Minister of State talked positively about it and there is a website promoting it. It is vital that we assist families who are facing horrendous intimidation over drug debts. The Minister of State is going to come back to me, so I welcome that, yet in the budget fact sheet, there is no reference to any funding for it whatsoever. There is the announcement of a new project, for example in Whitechurch, in my constituency, where 75 families have been supported by WASP Ireland, from money that was accessed under the community safety and innovation fund, but that money is over. On 1 January, they will be asking if they will be able to support these families any more because no funding is provided under DRIVE. It is not just a question of funding, but that is kind of where the rubber hits the road.”
“Over the past ten years, while total funding for the health service has almost doubled, funding for local drugs and alcohol task forces has fallen by close to 5%. We had a back and forth earlier with the Minister of State about the impact of the latest budget on funding for the task forces. It seemed clear to me at the end of our discussion that the truth is that funding is being cut again. The task forces are the people who are doing the work on the front line. They are being asked to pay an extra 1.5% in the first year for auto-enrolment and no funding is provided for that. That is a cut in real terms. There is no ongoing core increase in funding to address the cost of living or the issue of inflation. That is a cut in a real sense. There was the presentation of the important DRIVE project.”
“The recommendation to develop not-for-profit cannabis clubs is a sensible idea that should be pursued by the Government. There are two aspects to a health-led approach to drugs, neither of which have been taken by the Government. One is to actually have decriminalisation or legislation, while the other is to invest in the health supports for people suffering from drug addiction, to whom the Government pays lip service. I had a Topical Issue earlier with the Minister of State on the funding of our local drug and alcohol task forces. The evidence is there. What is happening is a slow strangulation over the years of our task forces. When the rhetoric has shifted towards having a health-led approach, the Government has cut funding over the same period of time.”
“We should be going in the opposite direction - not just decriminalisation of drugs for personal use, which still leaves drug distribution and supply in the hands of criminal gangs, but full legalisation of them with State control and regulated distribution and supply. It is the only approach that would allow for Government regulation to ensure safety for users and eliminate profiteering on misery by either criminal gangs or private corporations. The committee's interim report also made proposals in that direction through a cross-party consensus recommendation that steps be taken to introduce a regulatory model for certain drugs with particular reference to the development of an Irish not-for-profit regulated cannabis market.”
“Instead, we have a situation where there are only 20 addiction counsellors working across the entire Irish Prison Service, with one addiction counsellor for every 277 prisoners, of whom about 200 are likely to be addicted to drugs. That means there is no chance of getting access to treatment if someone is serving a prison sentence of less than one year, which is the case for many prisoners on drug offences. I urge the Government to reconsider its backsliding on this vital issue. In the US, President Trump is relaunching the failed war on drugs but we do not have to follow him blindly over every cliff he goes over. The Government is backsliding as part of this rightward trend in politics in terms of military spending and abandoning climate targets. It must not do this with drugs policy as well.”
“The entire repressive system of courts and prisons could be radically reduced if instead of criminalising people for their addictions and expanding the prison system like the Government is doing, it prioritised addiction prevention and treatment. It costs €99,000 to keep one person in prison for a year. That is €385 million per year that we are spending to keep people with addiction problems in prison. Imagine what a massive expansion that would be if we instead put that money into prevention, treatment and rehabilitation programmes and tackled the inequality, trauma and adverse childhood experiences that draw people into addiction in the first place.”
“The experience with addiction is that it can take far more than two or three attempts to get off drugs, particularly when addiction treatment and rehab services are so massively underfunded and massively oversubscribed that, in reality, they are non-existent for many people in addiction. It is why we have the highest levels of drug deaths in Europe - a disgraceful situation for one of the wealthiest countries in the EU. That is an expression of the scale of inequality in this country. It is also why more than than 70% of people in prison suffer from some form of drug addiction. That is at least 3,889 people out of a total prison population of 5,556.”
“They say it every time they speak about it but with no real content because the language could mean decriminalisation or it could mean - I suspect it does mean - continuing with the flawed health diversion approach where drug users can be diverted to health services the first two times they are caught in possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use but after that, they are dealt with under section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act and condemned to be another victim of the failed war on drugs. "Three strikes and you're out" is a stupid approach to take to people suffering from drug addiction.”
“There was backsliding in the general election that is reflected in the programme for Government, which makes no mention of decriminalisation and uses similar language to the Fine Gael manifesto saying it will commit to a health-led approach to drug addiction and divert those found in possession of drugs for personal use to health services. In every debate on drugs in which I have been involved over the past number of years here, we see the words "health-led approach".”
“Fine Gael said that it would continue to implement with An Garda Síochána a health-led approach for people in possession of drugs for personal use, criticising Fianna Fáil for its position on decriminalisation. Fianna Fáil then engaged in backsliding in the face of that criticism from Fine Gael, saying that when it wrote about decriminalising drug possession for personal use, it only meant decriminalisation of cannabis, which clearly makes no sense. It meant what it wrote, which was the agreed position of all the parties and is the evidence-based position, but backslid in the face of leaning into right-wing law-and-order populism by Fine Gael.”
“I am doubtful about their actual commitment to it. The benefit of that is to remove the risk of discriminatory discretion being given to An Garda Síochána in respect of whether it prosecutes marginalised individuals or not. That was the position. All the parties agreed to that position after discussion and after looking at the evidence. We then went into the general election where Fianna Fáil promised in its election manifesto to decriminalise drug possession for personal use, making no distinction between cannabis and other drugs, only to be then criticised by Fine Gael for effectively being soft on drugs, abandoning the position it had arrived at through a discussion based on evidence for cheap right-wing populism.”
“I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. Decriminalisation of all drugs has been the policy of People Before Profit for very many years. We were delighted to see that this was finally adopted as a consensus cross-party position in the interim report of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Drugs Use, which was then chaired by Gino Kenny. The report was published last October. The interim report recommended that decriminalisation of possession for personal use should apply equally to all illicit drugs. Importantly, it also made clear that this should be done by repealing section 3 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. In other words, we should adopt a de jure as opposed to merely de facto approach to decriminalisation to ensure we have a consistent application of the health-led approach that everyone in this House pays lip service to.”
“I repeat the point that it certainly looks to me, and I think to many other people on the ground, that there is a slow strangulation of these task forces, which are providing vital services on the front line. Applications can be made for things like the community services enhancement fund, but that is not a substitute to core funding. That is what we hear from the task forces all the time. It is not a substitute because they cannot make long-term plans on the basis that they apply for this grant now. They need to be able to have permanent staff and be able to provide a future for people. They need to be able to pay for their pensions, so the key thing is core funding.”
“Third, I asked about DRIVE, an important national project which was being rolled out across the country but appears to have disappeared in terms of funding. There is still a website talking about how good it is and there is a press release about it but currently, as far as I can tell, there is no funding provided for it. In addition, I ask the Minister of State to address the exclusion of the local drugs and alcohol task forces from the reference group to support the implementation of the new national drugs strategy. She said that they are an integral part of the delivery of this, but it does not look like they are an integral part when they are not being included in it. I look forward to answers to those questions.”
“I appreciate the answer but the Minister of State knows as well as I do that it does not actually answer any of the points that I raised. I am hoping that in her two-minute supplementary response the Minister of State will address these issues. I appreciate that she gave the answer she was provided with but this is causing real concern for task forces across the country. I will repeat the basic points I made in my initial contribution. First, there is a cut to core funding of the task forces because no funding is being provided for auto-enrolment. Will the Minister of State clarify if any extra funding is going to be provided to meet the 1.5% increase in costs in the first year? Second, I asked about an additional ongoing funding uplift for the projects to cover the cost of living.”
“There is a saying from the disability rights movement "nothing about us without us" and yet here the people on the ground providing the services are not being included in the development of the implementation of the new national drugs strategy.”
“I hope it is just an error and that funding is being provided for DRIVE, so I look forward to hearing the Minister of State's response on that. A clear sign the task forces are being effectively run down from the top down is the fact they are not going to be included in the new reference group to support the implementation of the new national drugs strategy. The Department is saying that it will take a cross-sectoral approach as opposed to a representative one, so the people who are delivering these services on the ground in places like Tallaght, Whitechurch, Ballymun and other places across the country suffering from deprivation and experiencing drug abuse and all the problems that go with it will not be listened to.”
“This is an interagency project to respond to drug-related intimidation. This programme is rolled out in different task forces across the country. In Whitechurch in my constituency, the Whitechurch addiction support project, which is supported through DRIVE, caters to 75 families. These families are receiving threats from drug dealers. It is an horrific situation to be in. I have spoken to people in this situation many times. Because of DRIVE, the project was able to hire a dedicated worker for families experiencing drug-related intimidation. It managed to get two-year funding for this from the community safety innovation fund. That funding has now ceased and the project does not know what it will do from 1 January. What support will it be able to provide for the 75 families it was able to help in the past year?”
“The first year cost of auto-enrolment for drug task forces will be 1.5%. That will increase year on year but in the first year, we are talking about a cost of 1.5%. There is no funding provided to enable the task forces to meet that. That is a crisis for them. These people want their staff to be able to access pensions but this needs to be resourced. Where are they meant to come up with this money? There is no uplift for these projects to cover the rising cost of living, so it certainly looks like a cut in core funding because extra costs are being put on them without extra resources being provided for it. It is concerning that in the fact sheet on the budget from the Government, there is no reference to the drug related intimidation and violence engagement, DRIVE, project.”
“I appreciate the fact the Minister of State is here so I hope we can get some information for the local drug and alcohol task forces. These are the people who are doing the work on the front line in communities affected by drug abuse. I hope to hear differently from the Minister of State but it seems as though this Government is continuing the policy we have seen over the past ten years or so of what is the effective slow strangulation of our drug and alcohol task forces. We know that between 2015 and 2025, the overall health budget increased by 94.7%. It has almost doubled and yet core funding for local drug and alcohol task forces decreased by 4.5%. In its new budget, the Government is saying that there is no cut to funding for community drug services in 2026 but when we dig into the detail, that does not seem to be the case.”
“They are left in a terrible limbo situation in the run up to Christmas. They want the Government to intervene. The first ask is whether the relevant Ministers will meet with those workers and then work with the Department of Social Protection to ensure they get what they need.”
“Over 1,000 workers have been left in a desperate situation by Fastway Couriers going into receivership. These are direct workers and workers from franchisees. They have all been left being owed back pay or a back month of pay. They are owed wages. They should be owed redundancy. They are now struggling to pay bills and mortgages. However, they have been told they are effectively locked out for a month from accessing social welfare. They have been told they are still legally working for Fastway for 30 days from the point at which the receivership was announced but they will not get paid until the new year. The kicker is they cannot claim social welfare benefits in those 30 days and if they seek to claim social welfare benefits or they even start new employment, they would lose any redundancy entitlements.”
“I wrote to the Business Committee seeking a debate on safety for asylum seekers after we saw the horrific attack and what seems to be attempted murder with the attempted burning alive of a baby and children in Drogheda. This was not an isolated incident but one of over 30 arson attacks on asylum centres in what we are seeing as a campaign of far-right terror in this State. We need to be debating it. There is a direct line between the dog-whistling of Government leaders and the scapegoating of asylum seekers based on misinformation and the creation of a hostile environment.”
“There has been shockingly little coverage of the scandal of the illegal felling of over 30 acres of native broadleaf trees and mature hedgerows in Cork that date back to at least the 1800s, if not earlier. It was revealed by The Journal after an FOI to the National Parks and Wildlife Service last week discovered that nearly 2 km of ancient, long-established hedgerows with high biodiversity value for local wildlife were removed. Despite being refused permission to access the site via Coillte forestry lands, people continued to move their machinery onto the site for this illegal work through Coillte land. Is it going to be the standard that nature and biodiversity are to be sacrificed for profits in Cork? It is not far away from the Blackwater River, where there was an enormous fish kill, which I raised previously with the Taoiseach.”
“I did not mention anyone. It is for people to assume which of the candidates is which. One of the candidates is someone who defends freedom of speech and ordinary people's right to criticise the European Union, wants to protect neutrality, condemns the genocide in Gaza and all who have supported it, stands with carers and disabled people and voted again and again to ban evictions. People have a choice. One of the candidates is going to win.”
“If people want to strike a blow against the political establishment, against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, on Friday, they should not spoil their votes. There are two candidates, one of whom will win. One is the Government candidate and the other is an Independent candidate backed by the Opposition. One of them, like most ordinary Irish people, voted "No" in the first Nice and Lisbon treaty referendums.”
“That is the reality. People who spoil their vote are offering to be the dupes of the Irish millionaires. They should not be under any illusion that Micheál Martin, Simon Harris or Heather Humphreys will be upset. They will not be upset. All the spoiled votes will go into one big pile in the count centre. People in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will not care what people write on their ballot papers. The only thing they care about is that the more spoiled votes there are from people who are rightly angry with and alienated from the political establishment, the fewer votes there will be for the candidate who is not their candidate and the less embarrassing a defeat it will be for them and the establishment.”
“Okay. The people who are driving this Spoil the Vote process are part of the elite. They are not anti-establishment at all. They are a different, more socially conservative part of the elite than Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They are the Opus Dei wing of the establishment - wealthy fundamentalist Catholics who want to drag us back to the Ireland of the Magdalen laundries, the mother and baby homes and the industrial schools. They want to make divorce and contraception illegal again. They want to abolish choice and bodily autonomy and force women back into the home. People have the right to spoil their vote; there is no question about that. However, if they do so, they will be being taken for fools, like the millions of working-class Americans who voted for billionaire businessman Donald Trump because they thought he was anti-establishment.”
“That is what we are meant to think the calls are about. However, it is very revealing to look at where these calls are coming from and who stands to benefit from them. Leading the Spoil the Vote campaign, from his Downton Abbey-style mansion, is multimillionaire businessman Declan Ganley. He said he was going to write "No. 1 - Maria Steen" on his ballot paper. He and Maria Steen have a lot in common. They are filthy-rich, anti-choice Catholic fundamentalists. Anyone who can afford to pay more than €20,000 for a handbag or to live somewhere called "Moyne Park Mansion" is, by definition, not anti-establishment.”
“A name, address and contact details had to be provided for each person, which were then checked. That answers the objection as to what is to stop somebody from just listing and signing for 1,000 people from the electoral register. The nominee details are physically checked. In America, this is very common in lots of states, with different states having different requirements. In Florida, 145,000 signatures are required, while in Michigan, the requirement is 12,000. Requirements are different from state to state but the process is very common. There is also something similar in the European Union. Citizens' petition initiatives require 10,000 signatures from Ireland. A process exists in Switzerland. It absolutely can be done. Calls for people to spoil their vote on Friday are pitched as an anti-establishment campaign.”
“We chose 35,000 because it is approximately 1% of the electoral register for presidential elections. A candidate would need signatures from 35,000 people to be nominated without the need for any votes from TDs, Senators or councillors. I hope the parties and Independent Members will support our amendment. It would lead to a real and radical democratisation of the nomination process, which is not provided for in Aontú's motion. The only objection I have heard is a practical objection as to how our proposal would work. This is a process that works in many other countries. I just spoke briefly to my partner, who was involved in socialist politics in America. On multiple occasions, she collected signatures for ballot initiatives - in effect, referendums - and nominations for candidates.”
“Let us be real, as everyone here must be, in acknowledging we cannot have a system wherein anybody can nominate himself or herself for President. On a practical level, there must be some barrier to standing for President. It is just not feasible to allow thousands of people to stand. It would not be a democratic process, there could not be an informed debate and there is the question of how a ballot paper could have thousands of names. We need some kinds of barriers to entry as a presidential candidate. The question is what those barriers should be. That is really what the discussion is about. Our amendment puts forward that we need a new direct democratic process by which the people actually get to decide. It would be a process whereby a set number of people can nominate a candidate.”
“The motion also allows for a candidate to be nominated by 110 councillors - that is a new development to say councillors as individuals can nominate - or three councils. I agree with all of those proposals in the sense that they lower the barrier slightly but we should not pretend that this allows the people to pick. Fast-forward seven years and, let us say, there is a highly conservative candidate who gets 13 TDs, and I presume we will have exactly the same discussion where we will be told it is an overly restrictive process. That is assuming this motion passes, we actually have a referendum and so on. What is proposed by Aontú does not get to the nub of the issue in terms of letting the people pick candidates.”
“It suits Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They are the ones who made the rules. They told their councillors not to nominate anyone other than Jim Gavin and Heather Humphreys. However, there is quite a gulf between the rhetoric of Aontú on this issue and the actual proposal. I listened to Peadar Tóibín's speech earlier and it was about "Let the people pick" and stop the political establishment curating the process, but the proposals from Aontú do not let the people pick. They keep the political establishment curating the process. Aontú's proposals just create a slightly lower bar for the curation of the process to ensure that, if these rules had been in place, Maria Steen would have been selected. They reduce, for example, the number of TDs from 20 to 14.”
“On this motion, the simplest and very easy part, which, in theory, I think every party in this House agrees with but some parties are not going to do anything about because it does not suit them politically, is that Irish citizens living in the North should be entitled to a vote in presidential elections. That is obvious. It is an opinion that is held by the vast majority of people. It is an easy problem to fix and it should be fixed with a referendum as soon as possible, and we all know the cynical reason that it is not. The more complex and in a way more interesting area is the question of the nomination process for president, which has obviously come into focus. It is undemocratic. I agree with a lot of the criticisms that are made, such as about why we are discussing this now, but it is overly restrictive.”
“People are right to be angry about this situation but some people's anger is being abused by those who want to cause violence, those who want to spread division and those who want to spread hate, and last night's violence at Citywest Hotel will do nothing for the victim of sexual assault. The man who allegedly did it has been arrested for it and was not even living in Citywest Hotel at the time. I am sure the people living there were horrified. They were in fear last night. The children living there were in fear about what would happen if the crowd succeeded in breaking through. Instead of division and violence, we need to stand together with the victim, with the family and against the repeated failures of the State.”
“I move amendment No. 1: To insert the following after "or an incumbent to nominate a presidential candidate": "; and — amend the law to allow a petition signed by a minimum of 35,000 people who are eligible to vote in a presidential election to nominate a presidential candidate.". Before I start on the topic, I seek a little leeway, given the events that have happened in Saggart over the last number of days, to express my utter horror, condemnation and disgust at the alleged sexual assault of a ten-year-old girl. My heart goes out to her and to her family. It is obviously beyond every family's worst nightmare. From what we know so far, it seems that there is a failure by the State here of a vulnerable girl who, though in State care, ended up in a situation where she could be sexually assaulted in this way. It is utterly horrific.”
“I will restate my basic points. I am opposed to the criminal invasion. I call for the immediate withdrawal of all forces. It is the right of Ukrainian people to decide their future; it is not for Russia to decide. I am against sending Irish troops to participate in a war against Russia in Ukraine. I am asking the Taoiseach whether he agrees with his candidate in the presidential election that this is what we should do.”
“I call for Russia's unconditional withdrawal. I call for the right of ordinary people in Ukraine to decide, but I am against Irish troops----”
“The Taoiseach's former Cabinet colleague and now preferred choice for President, Heather Humphreys, took part in a radio debate about a week ago during which she said that Irish troops should not be stopped from being sent to Ukraine by a Russian veto. Is that the Taoiseach's position? Is he in favour of sending Irish troops to Ukraine without Russian consent? Doing so would mean placing their lives in very serious danger because they would be seen as hostile forces by Russia if they were sent there despite its opposition. It would also presumably mean that there would be no peace agreement. They would not be peacekeeping troops. In other words, they would be part of a NATO- or EU-led military intervention rather than an international peacekeeping force. To be clear, I am opposed to the Russian invasion.”
“I am increasingly desperate, anxious that I will miss something like an exam or something far more important than just a lecture in the near future. For years, we have been promised that BusConnects is the answer but the A-spine is now delayed until the autumn of 2026 at the earliest, and it will likely be over capacity as soon as it starts. What is the Government planning to do to fix the bus service?”
“I want to ask about transport infrastructure, of which buses are the easiest, quickest and cheapest part to deploy. Every day, pretty much, I get emails about the state of the bus services in Ballycullen, Knocklyon and Rathfarnham. The 15 bus service is the busiest route in Dublin and the 15B is also grossly overcrowded. What is happening is that buses routinely fill up in the morning after the first few stops and then leave everyone behind at the later stops. This is a daily occurrence. One constituent says: I now leave home at 7.15 a.m. to get to work for 9 a.m. My home is exactly 5 miles from the GPO. Who is accountable for privatising the buses? I do not remember getting to vote on it. I'm going to lose my job if this goes on. A student says: Something needs to be done quickly.”
“Can I ask whether we are going to schedule a debate about the new principle being espoused by a presidential candidate that TDs should have to declare previous professional work relating to a topic before speaking on it in the Dáil? For example, the Minister of justice, who I thought spoke well on this yesterday, would have to declare, before he spoke about violence, if he was ever involved in defending a murderer. It would then be assumed that he was sympathetic to murderers as a result. Does the Government not propose to pursue this and disagree with their candidate for President?”
“That is the main intervention we need, as opposed to throwing more and more money at landlords, big developers and those profiteering from the housing crisis.”
“That tells us who the Government represents and gives a hint of the alternative, which is to use the money to build homes. If we look at what makes up the cost of an apartment, just over 50% is construction costs. Half the price of an apartment is the cost of building it, on average. The profit, land prices and developer's margin together make up 20% of the overall price. If you do the maths, public building on public land would cut prices by 20% because it would get rid of land costs since it is public land and you get rid of profit. Profit is not a necessary cost. We do not need to pay for these developers' substantial profits or give them even more profits, which is what is being done with this tax break. We need to use public money to build social and affordable homes on public land.”
“All of this will lead to higher land prices as more profitable units are squeezed into a site. Land prices make up a significant portion of apartment costs, even more than developers' profits. The consequence will be inflating prices, which should be the last thing the Government seeks to do. This illustrates a number of things. It illustrates who the Government represents. People always ask me why the Government cannot solve the housing crisis. It is because it represents those who are benefiting from the housing crisis. That is what this policy proves. During a housing crisis, and at a time when developers are making big profits already, the Government is giving a tax break to developers, as opposed to investing in public housing.”
“It will have a distorting effect on land values. To quote Orla Hegarty, she stated: The VAT cut adds €20,000 to this profit margin [of the developers] for every apartment. More government interventions that are inflationary, drive up land values, shore up dysfunction and worsen the housing crisis. A sweetener for developers that will be absorbed into margins and land values, worsening structural problems in the sector. The CEO of Cairn Homes believes the benefit for it will be even higher. Michael Stanley said, "A suite of budget measures announced on Tuesday, together with new apartment construction guidelines unveiled during summer, are probably worth about €70,000-€80,000 per apartment." That is on top of the €50,000 per apartment profit it is currently making.”