I am glad to have the chance to raise these important issues. I wish to discuss and deal with the issues preventing homeowners from renting out vacant houses and the tax that people have to pay. People must pay up to 50% in tax when they rent a private house or in respect of a house that they want to rent out. Fifty percent of €800 is only €400, and it is not worthwhile for many people who I know with these types of houses. The other thing is that people cannot get tenants out when they want to. That is happening a lot, and people are afraid to rent out their houses. People tell me the RTB has too much say, too much power and that it is in favour of the renter rather than the house owner but this is biting the renters as well because houses are vacant but are not available to be rented. I raised this issue with the Taoiseach almost two years ago. I gave him the instance of a road I know very well that runs from the top of the town in Kenmare through Kilgarvan and within five miles of Killarney town. There are 55 houses. People can get on the bus, which passes every half hour, almost, so there is transport available, but the houses are closed down. No one wants to rent them out because of the two issues I mentioned. There has been so much talk about housing since I came up here in 2016 that if every word spoken was a concrete block, we would have hundreds of houses built around the country and there would be no problem because there would be more houses than we need. We must do everything and these houses are vacant. They are fine houses. The croí conaithe grant is great, but it takes too long to administer and there are too many loops and hoops to go through and get over. I thank the people who are administering it in Kerry County Council. They are great girls and they are doing their level best but it takes up to two years and many people are shying away from availing of the grant because the timeframe needs to be made much shorter. I am asking the Government to do something to incentivise householders to rent out their houses. It should be something like the €800 tax free that was given to the people hosting Ukrainians. I did not realise until lately the Government was paying the €800. I am not asking for that at all and I want our own people to be seen after, but I am asking that house owners would get €800 tax free. There is also the €14,000 for those who rent a room in cities or whatever. That should be expanded. I am thinking of a scheme like that that allows people to not have to pay the tax or to get some help so they rent out the houses. These houses are not in what we might call populated areas but they have been grand and they could be grand if the house owners got help tax-wise or some incentive to help them go down the road of renting. If we got them at it they would stay at it but there is so much sour grapes about not being able to get people out of their houses when they want to get them out and the tax they would have to pay that they are not bothering to rent them out at all.

Sentiment score: 0.24

That is only one road.

Sentiment score: 0.00

I thank the Minister of State very much for his reply. I know all the reasons he has given for why a tenant would have to leave, but in practice it is very hard to get that through and to get the house back. As I said about the road from Kenmare through Kilgarvan and down to within five miles of Killarney, it is just one road and I believe there are hundreds of houses, even in Killarney itself, that are idle. They are in Marian Terrace, St. Brendan’s Terrace and all those sorts of places in Killarney town and it is just because it is not worth the owners’ while to rent the houses. A fellow went to Australia for a year and said he wanted his house back, but he did not get it back for three years when he came home. Owners should not have to go through that; it is not fair. We are here to help each other address the housing problem and there are so many different ways. With voids, as far as Kerry County Council is concerned, there is too much of a cost to fit out the houses. There was a house in Kilgarvan I raised lately, I think with the Minister of State, where the council demanded the chimneys be taken down. There was no need in the world for that as there were people in those houses up until a few months ago. They only needed to be painted, done up and whatever was needed. Why were bedsits ruled out in 2015 or 2016? Young people lived in them forever and a day until they were not allowed any more. At that time, people in bedsits just had the room and came out to the top of the stairs or somewhere and they all used the one bathroom. Now there is the facility of having an en suite and all those kinds of things. These people hardly turn on their sides in the bed before they are out of it again. They just want a place to change their clothes and lie down for a couple of hours before they get going again while they are young. We could take a lot of people off the housing lists. There are the kind of things we need to address, especially the voids and the reasons people are not renting out their houses. I ask the Government to please do that. It will have my 100% support to do that.

Sentiment score: 0.02