Tánaiste accuses Doherty of ‘aggression, nastiness, fury’ in row over housing

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar launched a personalised attack on Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty, accusing him of using "aggression, nastiness, fury and anger" during hostile Dáil exchanges on the Government's housing policy.

Mr Varadkar accused Mr Doherty of using anger merely for his social media posts as the Donegal TD claimed a Government decision not to include apartments in the regulations to stop the bulk buying of homes by investment funds was “blocking and locking” first-time buyers out of the market.

The Donegal TD said Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe was warned by senior officials in his department that “no extra stamp duty on bulk purchases of apartments means individual purchasers are potentially driven out of the market due to the lack of availability”.

But it “ignored their advice and proceeded with a policy it knows will not address the issue”, he said of the move to apply a 10 per cent stamp duty on the block buying of 10 or more houses in a 12-month period, but not apartments.

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Claiming the Government is supporting funds, developers and banks rather than workers and families trying to buy a home, Mr Doherty said there was more evidence of this on Wednesday “when it was reported that 398 homes across three locations in this city - Santry, Finglas, and Clongriffin - were snapped up by these funds.

“Not one of these homes will come on to the market for first-time buyers and not one of the funds has to pay the increased stamp duty.”

He said that six out of seven homes in Dublin city are apartments and the vast majority were being “snapped up by funds, which do not pay even a single cent of tax on rental income”.

“In fact, last year, one of them made €75 million in rental income and paid no tax on it whatsoever.”

‘Get real’

But the Tánaiste said that the State bought 20 per cent of homes through local authorities and affordable housing bodies compared to 10 per cent by funds. He added that people “are more likely to be competing with the State than with investment funds”.

He said they would keep the policy under review and were open to altering it but “we don’t want to do anything that is counterproductive”.

And he said the Government had helped tens of thousands of people to buy homes through the help-to-buy scheme, something he said Sinn Féin had consistently opposed.

But Mr Doherty told the Tánaiste to “get real” and that almost 400 more houses would not get to market because they had already been bought by funds.

He said Mr Varadkar lived in Dublin and “should understand what’s happening”.

Six of seven homes in the city are apartments and 95 per cent of them have been bought up by institutional funds.

“They are able to do that because the Tánaiste, when Taoiseach, along with the then-government, introduced sweetheart deals that allow the sky-high rents of €2,500 per month which they are charging ordinary, hard-pressed families to go tax-free.”

But Mr Varadkar then rounded on the Sinn Féin TD and accused him of using his anger for his posts on social media.

“Deputy Doherty said that I need to get real. He needs to calm down. The constant display every Thursday of aggression, nastiness, fury, and anger is all pre-planned for the purposes of the social media video he proposes to put out in a few minutes or an hour’s time. Everyone knows that.

“Let us have a rational, grown-up conversation about housing policy and what are the right and the wrong things to do,” Mr Varadkar said.

“It’s just done for social media; you don’t really care.”