A State construction company could ramp up and deliver 35,000 homes a year in a comparatively short period, according to People Before Profit leader Richard Boyd-Barrett.
He said his party would not meet builders and developers in formulating housing policy. “These people are not building houses because they want to solve the problems of people coming into my office. They’re building houses to make money,” the Dún Laoghaire TD said.
“That angle of trying to profit out of the situation is driving their considerations, and everything I see tells me that is the root of the problem.”
He said the profit motive “dominates the housing sector”, and while he said there would be a private house building segment for the foreseeable future, there was a problem in its pre-eminence.
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People Before Profit is pledging a State-owned construction company, something other parties including Labour, have also included in their manifestos. Mr Boyd-Barrett said the State should be delivering half of the party’s projected need of 70,000 homes per year, which he said could be achieved “relatively quickly”.
Pointing to the work done by the ESB in the 20th century, he said Ireland was “electrified through the development of a State energy company, and we need the equivalent for construction”.
A State construction company, he said, could improve conditions and job security, increasing the number of people working in the sector to close to the levels seen during the Celtic Tiger. He criticised the Government’s planning Bill over the level of targets mandated for social and affordable housing in new developments, saying they are too low.
He said that parties of the left have traditionally facilitated Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in returning to government, which he believes “has done a lot of damage to the project of building the left in this country”.
Mr Boyd-Barrettsaid the party wanted to remove income limits on social housing eligibility in the long term – but in the short term increase supports for those who find themselves in housing difficulty but are not eligible for supports.
“You could be homeless, but not eligible for [Housing Assistance Payment]. I’m meeting more and more of those people,” he said.
People Before Profit has long been in favour of wealth taxes, which play a significant part in its manifesto, as well as a higher corporation tax rate of 20 per cent. Mr Boyd-Barrett rejected the idea that heavier wealth or corporate taxes would lead to a flight of capital from the country, saying he had challenged the 12.5 per cent corporation tax and the facilitation of tax planning schemes such as the Double Irish, which had since been revised or shut down.
Companies had not fled the country following these changes, he said. “I don’t think they’re going to leave the enormous profits they are making in this country behind because we make them pay a bit more tax,” he said.
Meanwhile, he said a few millionaires may be more mobile but the majority would not leave the country because of higher tax.
He said wealth taxes targeting the highest earners would impact 20,000 to 30,000 people , but could generate between €5 billion to €8 billion per year.
“Whenever you try to challenge inequality or unfairness, there’s always somebody telling you ‘you can’t do that, there’s going to be dire consequences’,” he said. “Those who have a vested interest in the status quo are always going to try and intimidate those that want to change things into that it’s a dangerous thing to do or a reckless thing to do.”
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