There are reports this week of 435 apartments in Ashtown in Dublin 15 being sold off to a foreign investment company based in Germany several years before these apartments will be completed. According to the Construction Industry Federation, in 2019, 95% of apartments were sold to institutional investors, leaving only 5% for everyone else. Individuals and couples simply cannot compete with these multimillion euro investment funds. An entire generation is being locked out of home ownership. Rents for apartments in Dublin are higher than in any other city in the European Union. In Germany, residential investment funds were banned from buying up apartments and homes. Will the Government bring forward legislation to ban the buying up of homes by real estate investment trusts, REITs, and investment funds?

I do not believe there are any plans for legislation in that regard but I will check with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. We need to take a more rounded approach to housing in general. Rather than banning different types of housing or housing investment, we need all sorts of housing and lots more of it, whether it is social housing for people on the housing list, cost rental or private homes for people to buy. We need more housing of all types in Ireland. The solution is not to try to ban types of housing or housing investment. While it might be the case there are too many of these investment funds and they are too active in the market in Dublin, it does not mean there is no place for them at all. It is not that these apartments are empty. I know people who live in apartments managed by companies such as Kennedy Wilson in places like Islandbridge. They do a good job, people rent there, and they have a home as a result of that. I do not think we should be so ideological and absolute about this. This should never be about banning types of housing or housing investment. We need lots more housing of all types and we need both public and private investment.

On the same issue, will this rounded approach to housing extend to trying to do something to stop people from being unjustly evicted? Our treatment of the homeless reached a new low this week where the homeless, in homeless accommodation, are now being evicted. At the Travelodge in Ballymun, families, including a woman with a tumour, and people with kids in school in Ballymun, were told on Tuesday they had to be out on Thursday from homeless accommodation. We now evict the homeless. They have been told they have to go off to Coolock or Clontarf, and if they do not accept that, they will end up in a dive, to quote one official. Will the Tánaiste look into doing something about that? I have asked repeatedly if the Tánaiste will do something about the tenants of St. Helen's Court in Dún Laoghaire, eight of whom stand to be evicted tomorrow by a vulture fund because the Government has failed to close the loopholes that allow vulture funds, purely for money, to evict good tenants who pay their rent and put them onto the street and who will now be knocking on the homeless service's door in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.

I appreciate these are important issues and the Deputy is entitled to raise them, but where they refer to specific developments and specific individuals, it is difficult for me to reply without knowing any or much of the information. If the Deputy wants to correspond with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, that would be the best way to bring the matter forward.