‘Vulture funds’ bought 6,000 homes in 2022 despite regulations to halt ‘bulk buying’ - Mary Lou McDonald

“Vulture funds” bought 6,000 homes across the country in 2022, including 2,000 houses, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has told the Dáil.

Ms McDonald said a year after the Government introduced regulations to clamp down on such funds bulk buying homes, “we see that more homes than ever were being bought by these vulture funds”.

“In fact, it was one in ten of all houses sold were bought by funds that year,” she said.

Speaking during Leaders’ Questions on Wednesday, the Sinn Féin leader said the figures were published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

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Ms McDonald again raised the housing development at Belcamp Manor in Balgriffin, north Dublin, where 85 per cent (46 out of 54) of properties in the estate were bought by an investment fund.

The Dublin Central TD called on TDs to support her party’s motion setting out to increase the rate of stamp duty, currently 10 per cent, applicable on the bulk purchase of homes to 17 per cent.

The Sinn Féin motion is due to be voted on by TDs on Wednesday night.

Ms McDonald also said the Taoiseach shouldn’t “play down” the issue or “pretend it’s not happening”.

“This is a big problem, it cuts to the unfairness at the heart of the housing crisis and you can’t blame young people in particular, feeling that the table is tilted against them,” she added.

In response, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said her figure of 6,000 was “higher” than he would have expected and asked Ms McDonald to provide him with the figures.

“It might be the case that some of those bulk purchases were for social housing, and that’s quite different,” he said.

“It might be that some of those bulk purchases were not family homes, and we have made a distinction between apartments and houses and family homes.

“So I’d like to interrogate those figures if you’d be good enough to supply them to me.”

[ Mary Lou McDonald interview: Sinn Féin leader talks housing, taking power and suing the media ]

Mr Varadkar said Sinn Féin wanted to increase stamp duty to 17 per cent, while the Social Democrats had proposed a rise to 100 per cent while others in Opposition wanted “an outright ban”.

The Fine Gael leader said even the Opposition wasn’t united on the “solution to this issue”. Mr Varadkar said any changes to stamp duty would have to be examined carefully.

“First of all, to make sure that any increase would be effective and secondly, to make sure that it wouldn’t have any unintended consequences,” he said.

“The fact that the Opposition is divided three to four ways on this actually shows that this is not a simple matter. While they might vote with you tonight, they don’t actually agree with you and that, I think, tells a story in itself.”

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