Bogfaimid ar aghaidh le Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí. Arís, a gentle reminder about time limits and mobile phones.

Go raibh maith agat. Three years ago, the Taoiseach's Government promised it would stop vulture funds bulk-buying family homes from under the noses of ordinary homebuyers. This followed considerable public anger on the back of a fund attempting to buy up the majority of homes at Mullen Park in Maynooth. On the floor of the Dáil the Taoiseach said:

What happened in Maynooth and Hollystown is not right. We do not want investment funds in any form coming in and buying substantially complete developments that could have been bought by first-time buyers, upgraders or even approved housing bodies ...

The Taoiseach then proceeded to introduce measures that left the door wide open for vultures. At the time, we warned the Taoiseach that his Government's measures were doomed to failure. We told him the Government had not gone far enough to deter the vultures but he ignored those warnings.

Fast forward two and a half years and more than 1,200 family homes have been snapped up by vulture funds since the Government introduced its regulations. These are homes on which vulture funds charge extortionate rent. Far from stopping the vulture funds, they are laughing all the way to the bank. It is a real kick in the teeth for everyone who has saved every spare euro and made real sacrifices to try to get a mortgage deposit together.

The latest such scandal has occurred at Belcamp Manor in north Dublin, where a vulture fund snapped up 46 of 54 homes in that estate, robbing ordinary families of the chance to buy a home. These homes are going to be let out at rents of upwards of €3,000 a month. The Taoiseach's response to the Belcamp Manor bulk purchase was that the Government would now have to look at what happened, but this situation did not come out of the blue. In fact, last year the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, was told by Department of Finance officials that the vulture funds had snapped up, and were still snapping up, family homes and it has got worse since then.

The Taoiseach's Government knows and has known that this has been happening and it knows how it has happened and why. The stamp duty rate the Government set out in May 2021 on the bulk-buying of homes was just far too low. Tens of thousands of homes already in the planning process were also left at risk of being snapped up by the vultures. The Taoiseach, then, should not be surprised. This has happened because the Government left the door open and the vultures swooped through.

Caithfidh an Rialtas stop a chur leis na gcreach-chistí agus tithe á gceannach acu faoi shróna na ngnáthdhaoine. Ní mór don Rialtas gníomhú go deimhneach ar thaobh na ndaoine atá éadóchas go mbeidh siad in ann a dtithe féin a bheith acu. The Government must act now to finally clip the wings of the vulture funds. The Taoiseach said his aim is to stop these funds swooping in and buying up housing estates. Yet the Government has indicated it will vote down Sinn Féin's motion which seeks to do just that. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has said the Government is reviewing the situation. Really? At this stage?

Every TD now has a chance tomorrow night to vote to actually clip the wings of vultures. I am asking each of them to do so and to stand with ordinary homebuyers in their constituencies against the unfair financial power of the vulture funds.

I am asking the Taoiseach to realise the damage these funds are doing. I urge him to change his mind and to support Sinn Féin's motion to stop these funds in their tracks.

I do not like to see investment funds buying up family homes en masse. I know the Deputy does not either. I have said that before. However, what she has represented in the Dáil today is not the full story. As is so often the case, she has engaged in a degree of misleading behaviour. The Government did change the law. We changed the law back in May 2021 after the events in Maynooth the Deputy has described. That change prohibited the bulk-buying of houses and duplexes by a single buyer and also allowed local authorities to apply planning conditions preventing the sale of homes in the kind of bulk seen in this case. I have looked into it. The planning permission for this particular development in Dublin 17 dates from 2019. The planning permission was therefore granted two years before the law was changed. The Deputy will understand that laws cannot be changed retrospectively in this State.

Stamp duty is set at 10%. We are not ruling out an increase, as the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has made clear, but it is something that has to be considered carefully because any change to tax can have unforeseen impacts and such changes sometimes do not work. We therefore need to make sure that if there is any change, it is thought through and teased out correctly. However, to be very clear, we have changed the law in this area. This could not happen in respect of any development granted planning permission from 2021 onwards. This is an old outstanding planning permission and that is why it was possible in this case.

With regard to the sale of family homes to bulk buyers, I do not have the exact figures in front of me but I think it was something like 600 or 680 out of 50,000 transactions last year, equating to perhaps 1,000 out of 100,000 transactions. It is not minimal or inconsiderable but it would not be accurate to create the impression that this is happening in great numbers.

I have set out the facts for the Taoiseach. I have acknowledged and put it to him that he did respond in 2021 on the back of the Maynooth situation. I also reminded him that, at the time, he was advised that he had not gone far enough. I also told him that, in July of last year, Department officials told the Minister that the regulations were failing. They said very clearly that funds were continuing to buy up family homes. The Taoiseach says that he wants this to stop - I presume we are all in agreement on that - so I cannot for the life of me understand why he proposes to vote down a proposal that would do just that. He cannot have it both ways. The Taoiseach cannot say that he wishes this behaviour to stop and then fail to take the very measures that would stop that same behaviour. The bottom line is that the losers in this scenario are hard-pressed families and workers who, as the Taoiseach will know, have scrimped and saved only to find that despite all the rhetoric from the Government, vulture funds can still swoop in and buy up family homes.

I have not seen the detail of the advice to the Minister, Deputy McGrath. I expect that when I see it, I will find out that Deputy McDonald has not told the full story or given the full picture to the Irish people and that she has engaged in a degree of misrepresentation and misleading behaviour. I suspect that the advice will also say that the number of family homes bought up by investment funds might have been something like 1% or 2% of total sales-----

It does not say that.

-----but I will double-check that. As I said earlier, the Government does not want to see family homes being bought up by investment funds. That is not the case at all. It is something we think is undesirable socially and economically. That is why we changed the law in 2021 to stop this happening. It does not apply to old permissions. This is an old permission from 2019. The Deputy's contention is that increasing stamp duty to 17% will solve the problem but she does not know that. A rate of 17% might not be enough or it might have other unintended consequences that she has not thought about and that would do harm to people and businesses. That is why it is important to give very careful consideration to any tax changes.