The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has come in for further criticism recently after a leading Fianna Fail TD claimed they should be doing more to help homeless Irish people because they were “set up to solve a problem, not to create another one.”
The latest criticism of the agency comes as Fianna Fáil TD John Brassil called on the State “to acquire houses back from vulture funds through Nama”. Mr Brassil believes such a proposal should seriously be considered as group thinking between the Department of Environment, Nama, housing agencies and local authorities, the lending agencies and the Construction Industry Federation, could lead to the homelessness crisis being seriously addressed.
Mr Brassil told the Dail: “in many areas there are adequate houses, they need to adopt measures to make them habitable”. The Fianna Fail TD also called for the government to introduce a grant scheme for property owners (i.e vulture funds) in rural towns and villages, that would see them do up the vacant houses which in turn would be made available to families currently without a home.
He further explained the condition of the grant system would be that the vacant houses would be made available to the local authority on a long-term scheme, with a similar scheme for local authority houses.
Mr Brassil claimed the scheme would drastically reduce the amount of homeless people on the nations streets whilst it would make use of the many vacant properties throughout the country.