Richard Boyd Barrett
Dún Laoghaire · People Before Profit-Solidarity · Ireland
“It is absolutely incredible that about 50% to 57% of all professional artists in this country live on or below the poverty line - three times the level of poverty in Irish society generally.”
“On a global level, the consumption of electricity by data centres is due to go up elevenfold by 2030. They are hoovering up the water resources and electricity resources of the planet. There will not be much human creativity, art or music if we have no water and no energy. That is what is going on with these people.”
“St. Joseph's Centre in Shankill is the largest care home dedicated solely to dementia care in the country. SIPTU members feel compelled to take industrial action tomorrow because of the failure of St. John of God's to recognise the work and duties that they do.”
“These people actually want to replace human beings and human creativity with AI. That would literally be the road to disaster for humanity. Some people think about AI as if it is cutting edge and the most advanced thing possible, but AI is like the Neanderthal.”
“Against that background, we are seeing these billionaires who run AI looking to steal en masse all of the artistic and creative output of humanity and to profit from it. The artists rightly are asking what the Government is going to do to prevent them making a bad situation for most artists and performers even worse.”
“I thank Deputy Ó Snodaigh for bringing this motion forward. As Deputy Paul Murphy indicated, People Before Profit is very happy to support and commend all the artists, organisations, musicians and so on who are campaigning to bring this forward.”
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“Is there enough then to deliver the critical infrastructure that we know we need? I will give one example where I cannot understand frankly why the money was not made available, namely, the case of The Complex. We need arts infrastructure. We had the Government bringing in stuff yesterday about drinking on the streets because we need greater vibrancy in our city centres and I agree that we do, so how could the Government let The Complex close down in Dublin's north inner city when all they were looking for was €6 million and they offered a win-win? It said that rather than sell it to a developer that was going to get rid of an art space, if the Government gave it €6 million on top of the €4 million it already had, we could retain a multidisciplinary art space and build social and affordable housing on top of it, so we would get a win-win.”
“The Minister has indicated that a levy of more than €446 million will be imposed on Departments to pay for an overspend in the Department of Education and Youth yet he suggests that this will not really have any impact because we are going to spend more next year anyway. In reality, will it not mean that there will be less money available than was projected for multiple Departments to undertake key infrastructure or projects or to provide services?”
“It could have done all of that, as well as getting social and affordable housing on top of it, for a small amount of money, relatively speaking, in the greater scheme of things. It did not do it, however. It just refused point blank to intervene and the place has since closed down. Apparently, it is not over yet because the sale has not gone through. I once again ask the Government to look at this. If it is committed to having vibrant, cultural spaces in our cities for social interaction and all that kind of stuff, for a few million euro, it could save The Complex, along with social and affordable housing on top of it. It is a win-win for the city and for culture, arts, music and everyone. Why would the Government not do it? I appeal to it to reconsider.”
“I had forgotten what the people running The Complex, which has since closed, proposed to the Government. I do not know if this was made clear to the Government, but it was certainly made to clear to the Department and the local authority at the time. The Complex had approximately €4 million but it needed an additional €6 million to buy the venue in order to save The Complex, all the artists' and cultural space. They proposed that the venue could be redeveloped to have social and affordable housing on top of it. It would have been a win-win for the north inner city. The Government had the chance to save a cultural space, including all the artists’ studios and rehearsal and performance spaces.”
“During the course of the by-election campaign, I met the person who ran The Complex. She reiterated and reminded me how disgraceful it was that the Government allowed The Complex to close. A lot of artists lost their studios and a lot of people who practised, rehearsed, performed or used the venue in some shape or form, as well as those were who employed in it, lost this wonderful, multidisciplinary arts, cultural and musical venue due to the lack of €6 million. The former Minister for Finance and TD for the area, Paschal Donohoe, more or less indicated that the money would be forthcoming to save the venue because it was being put up for sale but it did not materialise, despite the begging and pleading with the Government to save the venue.”
“Over the past while, a vibrant scene of young people sitting outside, enjoying themselves and eating and drinking has developed. There is a pleasant atmosphere. That is being shut down now because of a decision by the council, which is very regrettable. A good, new and organic development in the city centre is being taken away. It is a mistake. It is not helping the vibrance of the city. I will provide another example that was highlighted to me during the recent by-election, a matter in which we had been involved beforehand. Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, who was our candidate, is also a musician. He was involved in the campaign around The Complex. While this matter was raised repeatedly in this Chamber, it came up again during the recent by-election in Dublin Central.”
“A lot of young people were present. What drove their involvement in the protest was a sense of anger about a lack of cultural spaces where people can pursue things like developing grassroots music and different cultural pursuits and endeavours. They feel such spaces do not exist or are under constant pressure and that there is not enough support from the authorities and the State in providing those spaces for the community and society and for people involved in music and arts. People, therefore, felt the need to protest. The protest was about more than Izakaya, however; it was about a much wider issue about the spaces available. Of course, Drury Street is just around the corner from where that protest took place.”
“It centred around an alternative music venue for young people, DJs and so on that is threatened with closure because of a decision by the new owners of what used to be the Central Hotel – now the Hoxton Hotel - to try to take an injunction against a club that had been operating there for years. It is a great venue for grassroots music and DJs. Think about these people who took over the hotel. The club was there when they bought it. If they did not like the fact that the club was there, they should not have bought it. They should not have tried to close down an important venue for young people and music and culture in the inner city. There was fantastic energy on the protest. I met a lot of people whom I have never seen at protests before. While I knew some people at the protest, I did not know they had any stake in this.”
“I am happy to support this extension insofar as it is contributing to enabling and supporting street life in cities, towns and villages. It will allow people to socialise and interact on the streets. People will be able to enjoy the lovely weather we are having at the moment and make the very best of it. Generally, it brings vibrancy and energy to our cities, towns and villages. This is a good move by the Government but I wish enabling bars and restaurants to seat people on the streets was matched by a greater commitment from the Government to enliven our city and town centres and create the spaces people need, both for socialising and arts and culture more generally. Of the many protests I have attended and been involved with over the years, the Izakaya protest was one of the most enjoyable.”
“It begins with them being returned to the pay parity they enjoyed before austerity, which, let us not forget, was imposed after Fianna Fáil drove us over a cliff.”
“They are doing very difficulty work and are asking themselves why on earth they would continue to do the job when they are getting paid such a miserable level of pay and did not get pay restoration. They think it is because a lot of these so-called not-for-profit care companies are a stepping stone towards the privatisation of these services. You start at the same level as directly employed healthcare assistants, with parity and so on, and end up on poverty pay working for a company where there is no accountability and the work is outsourced and privatised. That is a big part of a changing world. It is not as high flying as digital and all that stuff but is an important part of our future, given our ageing population. We need to start to treat those workers properly.”
“That parity was broken and has never been restored for considerable numbers of people, despite an impression being conveyed that a deal was done when some people, those in section 39 organisations, got restoration. There was a whole group of people - and I am only getting my head around this - who were considered out of scope, whatever that means. It meant they did not get pay restoration. They are getting paid poverty wages while doing the same work as people who are employed directly by the HSE and get relatively decent wages compared to them. It is not just North Side Home Care Services workers who are in this situation and are on strike. I met a load of others. There are thousands of people doing this work.”
“One aspect of a changing world is a population that is getting older. That means we need more people caring for the people who get older and who are less mobile and have higher levels of disability and so on. That means the people who provide that care need to be treated properly if we are going to get the people to do the work, the need for which is expanding and is going to expand as the population of this country gets older. However, we do not, to a very large extent, treat them well. I have met quite a lot of people over the past couple of weeks. The workers at North Side Home Care Services are on strike. Once upon a time, they had parity with those who were directly employed by the HSE. They were at the same level as healthcare assistants.”
“On 13 May, the Irish Independent reported that DLR Properties Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, but which, incredibly, councillors have no control over and no say in whatsoever, put up for sale on the private market land in Cherrywood, which is zoned for more than 1,000 units of housing. It is shocking that the State - the only political representation on it is Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - is selling off land that could be used for housing in the midst of a housing crisis.”
“The situation is perverse because if you actually get a social home, or indeed if you are in a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy, when your income goes up, you do not get evicted, you just pay more rent. People who are homeless are now getting thrown off-----”
“I have asked the Taoiseach repeatedly about the social housing income thresholds, which have not been increased since 2023. Every year - indeed every month and every week - working people who have got a pay increase and who in some cases just get the working family payment are pushed over the limit. They might have been five, ten or 15 years on a housing list, and it is all gone. They are left in limbo. Most of the time when they go just over the threshold, their income is not sufficient to qualify for cost rental accommodation, so they are left nowhere. It is completely unfair. It is a stealth cut by the Government when there is real housing need in this country. It is massaging the figures.”
“Not only is the Taoiseach gutting the occupied territories Bill but, according to The Currency, which put in an FOI about the investigation into overflights as to whether weapons are going across our airspace to help Israel commit its crimes, that investigation has effectively ground to a halt. The Government is not serious about ending the potential complicity of this country with the genocidal horror being imposed on the Palestinians.”
“The Taoiseach is absolutely right; what I want is a complete boycott, divestment and sanctions. At the least, the Government should pass Frances Black’s occupied territories Bill as he promised he would do in the programme for Government. The Government even passed a motion in the Dáil in November last year to that effect.”
“As it was so obvious to the world that a genocidal slaughter was taking place in Gaza and that Israel was inflicting genocide, the Taoiseach was eventually forced to say that he thought a genocide was taking place. I ask the Taoiseach a simple question: do we continue to trade with regimes that are doing genocide and treat them as normal states? Do we just treat them like any other trading or business partner? Do we continue to increase the amount of trade we do with states that are doing genocide and apartheid? Do we, in 2024 in the middle of a genocide, approve €20 million of licences to the IDF, the military force that is committing the genocide in Gaza? That is what the Government did. I say that we do not treat states guilty of genocide as normal states and that we impose sanctions on them.”
“Israel was orchestrating the genocide in Gaza and is orchestrating the brutal regime of apartheid but the Government is not imposing any sanctions at all on the state that is doing it. Actually, our trade with Israel has dramatically increased over the last number of years, making Ireland the second biggest trading partner with Israel in the world. Will the Government stop the hypocrisy and actually bring forward a Bill that imposes serious sanctions on Israel for its criminal violation of international law, for genocide and for apartheid?”
“So, it will only prevent trade in goods, and maybe not even all goods. Reports in The Ditch in the last week suggest that exports from this country to the occupied territories may actually be 40 times more than are being officially acknowledged by Irish authorities because the Israeli authorities are giving much higher figures for the imports from this country. In any event, the exclusion of services is 70% of the trade between Ireland and the occupied territories. Of course, the Bill the Government is bringing forward will not impose any sanctions whatsoever on the Israeli state itself. That is providing the support and the means for the Israeli settlers to grab Palestinian territory and annex territory.”
“On the same day that 14 Irish people were being kidnapped on the high seas, tortured and abused last week and the Taoiseach was saying publicly that there should be no business as usual with the Israeli regime, he instructed Government TDs to go in and vote against our sanctions Bill, which would actually have imposed comprehensive sanctions on the State of Israel because of its crimes of genocide and apartheid and its systematic violation of international law, the very thing the flotilla activists had asked the Government to do. We have headlines today saying that the Minister is going to bring forward the occupied territories Bill, something the Government has been promising for a very long time. At the same time, however, that Bill in actuality will gut the original Bill drafted by Frances Black by not including services.”
“The Government is speaking out of both sides of its mouth on the question of sanctioning Israel. It is trying to convey to the public, who want to see sanctions imposed on this genocidal murderous regime, that it is imposing sanctions but in actuality it is doing everything to ensure that no serious sanctions are imposed on the regime.”
“Deputy McAuliffe's constituents asked him to vote for the sanctions Bill and he walked in here and voted against it. All of the Irish participants specifically asked their constituency TDs, Government and Opposition, to vote for the sanctions Bill but the Government TDs voted against it. Then they come in here saying there should be sanctions against Israel. That is gaslighting and duplicity which is designed to convey the impression that the Government is going to do something when it has done nothing. It is the impunity that Israel has been extended by our Government and by the EU that emboldens it. They say they can do anything. They can torture people, commit genocide, kidnap people on the high seas, do apartheid, invade Lebanon and bomb Iran and that nobody is going to do anything.”
“There is a genocide in Gaza, there is ethnic cleansing happening, there is apartheid and there is brutal suppression of rights, and the Government voted against imposing sanctions on them when the activists on the flotilla appealed to the Government to vote for it. The Government is gaslighting the Irish public.”
“Just a few days ago every single one of the Irish Global Sumud aid flotilla activists put out a video while they were on the boats, before they were kidnapped, asking the Government to support a sanctions Bill last night. The Government, after issuing statements condemning their kidnapping and abuse at the hands of the violent settler, Itamar Ben-Gvir, trooped in here and voted against a Bill proposing sanctions against the State of Israel, having said just before that there should be no business-as-usual with the Israeli regime. That regime is guilty not just of the abuse of the flotilla activists, which is disgusting and has given us a glimpse of its barbarism, but also the brutality that is inflicted on the Palestinian prisoners who are tortured and abused.”
“The judge is speaking about them as if they are terrorists when they are actually peace activists opposing German complicity with the genocide in Israel via Elbit Systems, which provides Israel with weapons. Is the Minister going to send observers? I am going to try to get an all-party group to go across to the trial. We will see whether all the parties will send someone. I know the Opposition will, but will the Government do so? Even German MPs are being refused access to the courtroom by the judge. That is how much of a show trial it is.”
“This points to the duplicity of the Government. It says it is appalled at the treatment of flotilla activists at the hands of the Israeli regime. The flotilla activists, before they were detained, or kidnapped, urged for a vote in favour of the sanctions Bill to sanction Israel but the Government condemned it, said there should not be business as usual and came in here and voted against sanctions. We are getting the same duplicity in the case of Daniel. Will the Minister send observers to the trial, which is what the family are asking for, because it is a show trial? It is absolutely outrageous. Why are the detainees even in custody? They are not a threat to anybody. They are being kept in solitary confinement before their trial in a high-security courthouse behind a glass cage, having been brought in handcuffs.”
“They videoed themselves. They handed themselves up for arrest peacefully because they were protesting about Elbit Systems or Germany providing arms to Israel for the commission of genocide. Their families are saying the trial is a show trial and that they should be released, and that the Irish Government should send observers to watch the trial to ensure that their rights are upheld at it, given the manner in which it is being conducted. Is the Minister going to do that?”
“I actually cannot believe my ears. Daniel's family are appealing for the Government to send observers because they fear a show trial situation. The detainees are being prosecuted under anti-organised crime legislation. They are being tried in a high-security court, not a normal court. They are being denied access during the trial to their own legal team. They are brought in handcuffed and put behind high-security glass. They have been kept in more or less solitary confinement – since last September in Daniel's case, or eight months. It is completely unprecedented. Daniel's legal team has called for the judge to be recused, such is the level of bias that has been directed against those on trial, the "Ulm five". To remind the Minister, they were protesting. It was an act of civil disobedience but there was no threat of violence.”
“Today, the world is rightly expressing disgust at the treatment of Irish and other activists trying to bring aid to the besieged people of Gaza at the hands of the Israeli regime. However, Germany, a European country, is treating another Irish citizen, another pro-Palestinian activist, in an equally outrageous way. There is a show trial going on and the basic rights of an Irish citizen are being absolutely flouted as he and the other detainees are being prosecuted as criminals and terrorists for protesting against Germany's complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza. Will the Government send observers to the trial to protect the rights of an Irish citizen, Daniel Tatlow-Devally?”
“If anything goes wrong with the economy, we will find ourselves right back where we were after the crash in 2008 or 2009. If there is any wobble in the Irish economy and people are landed with these massive debts they cannot afford, we will be right back where we were in the previous crash that sent the entire country over a cliff. Will they ever stop? I do not think so. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are not going to stop.”
“It is a scandal this is happening when some of us argued way back when that the NAMA mandate should have been changed. We should have developed it as a State construction company and we should have taken the zoned land and the land we are planning to rezone into public ownership to build public and affordable housing. Even now, that is what needs to happen if we are to have any hope of solving the dire housing crisis. That is all history, arithmetic and all the rest of it. However, at the end of the day what it all comes down to is more than 17,000 families in emergency accommodation and thousands of people paying rents they cannot possibly afford. They are paying between 50% and 70% of their income on unaffordable rents, or people are mortgaged up to their necks.”
“That is what they do in places like Finland where they have actually tackled the housing crisis and reduced homelessness, and where most of the land bank is in the control of the public authorities. It does not mean there is no private housing. I often hear the Government say that we do not want any private housing. That is not true. In Helsinki, the public authorities decide what is built and whether it is going to contribute to providing housing that is needed, is affordable and so on. Here, we just hand it over to the speculators, the hoarders and the profiteers in the property sector. We make people multimillionaires overnight and screw the vast majority of ordinary people who are just looking for an affordable roof over their head.”
“That is what it is going for in Dun Laoghaire at the moment. They are making an absolute fortune from unaffordable rents and fuelling all the homelessness and despair over extortionate rents that nobody can afford. That is the increased value that land has now been given because of a vote by a group of councillors in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. They are going to do the same in South Dublin, Dublin city and in Fingal. That is where that money comes from. It ends up in houses that cost between €600,000 and €800,000 or rents that are €3,000 or €4,000 per month. Ordinary people pay. Maybe, as we did the last time, the State will end up buying it back, instead of us just bringing the agricultural land into public ownership and rezoning what we need to build public and affordable housing.”
“When the houses are finally built, if they ever are by the way, they will do exactly the same. They have over zoned. This proposal from central government is that the national framework is looking for land for 528,000 new homes and for 15,000 ha to be rezoned. However, the required council land is for 300,000. We are massively over zoning by 50% but the people who own this will be made multimillionaires overnight. As I said, it is a 625% increase. When and if they build, they will be selling for €600,000, €700,000, €800,000 or €1 million, which is what some of the stuff is now going for in Cherrywood. The ordinary person trying to buy a home pays for this or, because not many working people can afford that, the big investment funds will buy it and rent it out, and they will rent it at €3,000 or €3,500 per month.”
“This varies but roughly speaking in the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown area zoned agricultural or green space is €80,000 per hectare. If it is zoned as residential that value goes from €80,000 per hectare to €5 million per hectare. That is a 625% increase overnight to the owners of that land. That has just been voted through in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. It goes without saying that we voted against it. The Fianna Fáilers and Fine Gaelers voted in favour of this. Overnight, the owners get a 625% increase in their investment for doing nothing. They are made multimillionaires but this is not a victimless crime. Where does the money come from? It is just like what happened with NAMA. Somebody is going to pay for this. The person who is going to pay is the end purchaser of the home or the renter.”
“We have not learned the lesson of the massive mistake of allowing these guys to run off with all the profits, control the housing sector, drip-feed the housing and profiteer from it and end up selling it back to us at extortionate prices that nobody can afford. They are fuelling the housing and homelessness crisis. We are now going to do it all over again by rezoning a big pile of agricultural land that is currently worth little. We are going to rezone it, so overnight it will be worth a fortune for its private owners, who are all the same people again - the land bankers and the speculators. This is happening as we speak, and I am amazed that nobody is ringing the alarm bells. To my mind, the scandal is beyond belief.”
“Mel Reynolds estimated that NAMA had 70% of the zoned building land around the greater Dublin area at one point. It was the whole land bank. It dictated what we are seeing now, which is house prices nobody can afford. Who can afford that stuff? The big investment funds can buy it up or the State pays massively over the odds to buy back what it originally sold at a knockdown price. That could all have been social and affordable housing, and we could have solved the housing crisis. Now they have gone through all that and largely made their profits from the NAMA portfolio and we are going to do it again.”
“However, the developer does not want to build the pedestrian bridge either because it is connected to the town centre. They just do not want to build it. Young kids are running along the Luas line from one side to the other in what is a serious safety hazard because the only shop is a Spar Express across the road from where the town centre is supposed to be. There is supposed to be a town centre with doctors, cinemas and supermarkets but there is just a big, massive hole in the ground and they are allowed away with it. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors are voting in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown to give them increased densities, so their investments are worth more. You could not make it up. That is replicated all over the country with the NAMA portfolio.”
“It is a massive hole in the ground that the developers refuse to build. It is not profitable for them. They do not want to build a town centre. They have no interest in a town centre. Now they have variations on the strategic development zone in order to increase the density so they can make more profit by building more units on the site, or so it becomes more valuable after it gets the planning permission for it or the change in zoning for it. Their investment increases in value again but the people do not have a town centre. I will give an example of how ridiculous it is. There is a bridge that carries the Luas from one side to the other. There is supposed to be a pedestrian bridge as well because there are people living on the other side.”
“None, zero, not a single affordable house. It is unbelievable. Developers just do not do it. Not only this but Cherrywood was supposed to be a flagship development and it was not going to repeat the mistakes of the past. It was to be a new town, the biggest residential development in the country and one of the biggest in Europe. It was going to be a ten-minute town. People would not need a car, and we need to get people out of their cars, because they could walk to everything. There would be parks and infrastructure paid for by the people. There are €600,000 or €700,000 houses, which only a small group of people can afford, and all of the stuff we buy back but at least people would be able to walk to the town centre. There was going to be a town centre. Does the Minister of State know what the town centre is?”
“We paid for the infrastructure. We provided LIHAF funding of €15 million with regard to Cherrywood, to give one example. In the original proposal around LIHAF funding, there was supposed to be a 40% give-back of the development in terms of affordable housing. That was dropped within about four weeks. It was taken off the original LIHAF proposal. We thought it was happy days and that we would get 40% social housing and a big chunk of affordable housing because the State had put in this LIHAF funding. That was then dropped and there was no 40%. We were going to get €15 million worth of affordable housing - in other words, we were going to get back what we put in. This would have been a disgrace but we did not even get that. Does the Minister of State know how much affordable housing we got in Cherrywood?”
“It was in no hurry to build. It was flipping sites. Mel Reynolds reckons that Hines had made profit before a single brick was laid in Cherrywood because it had already started to flip parcels. TASC has done reports on the wider NAMA portfolio. A lot of the investors who bought had no intention of building; they were just going to hang on until the housing crisis got bad enough that their property investment had increased in value and then they would sell it on. They would sit on it. They wanted to wait and create a housing crisis before they would even consider building or, more likely, flipping it on to somebody else who would then build it out but at massively inflated prices and then we buy it back from them. The Mafia could not have made this one up. We sell it to them at a song, they make massive profit and we buy it back from them.”
“This is what people have to pay to buy them. This rules out the ability of 80% or 90% of ordinary people to buy them. I would say that roughly 80% to 90% of people could not possibly afford them. This is what they sell for. If we look at houses being sold in Cherrywood at that moment we see they are this price. They were all in our hands. Not only this but to take Cherrywood as an example, we put €15 million of taxpayers' money into infrastructural funding for that development. The parks and the roads were paid for by the public but the developer walks off with the profits, selling the houses at €600,000 and €700,000. Insofar as we get 10% social housing, we have to pay developers for it at prices they set. We sold for a song. In this case Hines, one of the big investors invited in at the time, sat on it for about ten years.”
“We got back €36.4 billion but it went up to at least €79.1 billion and probably more in reality. This is a back of the envelope calculation; it is probably an underestimation of what its actual value was when it was being built out and sold off. The investment funds, the property speculators and the developers walked off with about €42 billion. This is probably a conservative figure but I would say it is the minimum that they walked off with. This is all maths but I will translate it to Cherrywood, one of the big sites that NAMA took over from developers who helped bankrupt the country. It is the biggest residential development in the country and it is in my area. If we include the really expensive houses, the average price there is €1 million. If we take out the really expensive ones, the average price is €600,000 to €700,000.”
“There was all this potential to deliver housing that could have been public and affordable housing but instead it was given to these investment funds and now we are buying it back. This is what is happening. The local authorities are buying it back and approved housing bodies are buying it back to provide social housing but at the prices set by these developers who got it from us at knockdown prices. The real maths and arithmetic of this is that we paid €31.8 billion and got €5.6 billion in profit, which amounts to €36.4 billion, but in the intervening period between 2010 and 2025 house prices went up 150%. If we take the figure of €31.8 billion as the bottom of the market for the portfolio - the par value was €70 billion but that is what we paid for it - a 150% increase brings it up to €79.1 billion.”
“Some of us proposed at that time that all of these should be public and affordable housing. Against this, we can look at what the delivery of public and affordable housing has been in the years intervening. For most of the years of the fire sale to the vulture funds that Michael Noonan invited in, a lot of this was being co-ordinated by a group called the Clearing House Group, which had organised special access to the big companies, the Department of Finance and the Department of Taoiseach at the time. It was essentially writing the budgets. If I remember correctly, in 2013 Michael Noonan met 60 of these investment funds where they planned a massive sell-off of this enormous property portfolio, the biggest property portfolio in the world, to these investment funds.”
“The plan for the decision to sell off all those assets to investment funds and vulture funds was hatched when NAMA was originally set up with its mandate in 2009. Most of the sales, and the big push to sell off to the investment funds, happened under the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government that came into power in 2011. I came into the House in 2011 and I remember so well Michael Noonan saying it was necessary to restabilise the Irish property market. At the time some of us said this was a big mistake. We had the biggest property company in the world. I have been reading over some of the stuff and a huge amount of the property was in the Dublin area where the housing crisis is now concentrated. NAMA had the potential to build about 86,000 housing units.”
“You would be in a different place. We might all be. When the history books are written, NAMA will go down as one of the greatest scandals ever. I find it pretty amazing, shocking really but maybe not totally surprising, that the Government tries to present it as some sort of success story. The State paid out €31 billion initially to take over the assets of the developers, who had bankrupted the country, leading to a decade of austerity and huge hardship for the country. We paid €31 billion and the Government's argument is that we got it back and we made €5.6 billion on top of it, so everything is fine and we could even put it down as a success. It was entirely predictable, and some of us predicted it and said it was absolutely clear at the time.”