It is good that we are discussing housing, albeit a miscellaneous provisions Bill. I have not seen the Minister's amendments, even at this stage. We dealt with another miscellaneous Bill last night on justice and, at the last minute, we were dealing with a large volume of amendments which were not relevant to the original purpose of the Bill. They were related to justice all right and they were miscellaneous but that was not what the Bill was. Hopefully, the amendments that have been tabled will address some of the issues I have. One of the issues that we are dealing with in this State is basically that the State is totally dependent on private landlords and, in many cases, vulture funds to deal with housing issues. Yet we are here. Maybe it is about standardising the eligibility criteria. I never noticed that there was a problem in Dublin City Council, which is the local authority I mainly deal with. I think local authorities understood who was eligible and who was not across the board. Maybe we need a standardisation across the whole country to ensure similar processes and approaches to what we had in Dublin City Council with the points system and a scheme of lettings. There is a new scheme of lettings, which is another change only voted on last night and even that did not address all of the issues. There are little peculiarities in Dublin City Council. Even in Dublin someone is allowed to be on three lists at the same time - three of the council lists because there are four local authorities in Dublin. The problem now is that many of those who end up homeless and then end up in hot properties who are from Dublin are ending up in Kildare, Wicklow or somewhere else, but they are not allowed to be on the Dublin City Council housing list any more because their focus of interest, according to the council, is elsewhere. You have to fight each case. Maybe there is a need for a single list for the whole country. It needs to be thought about even though there may be problems with it, such as taking away some of the powers of the local authority. We need to ensure the model works. Others have highlighted the Vienna model which addresses the thresholds, which are absolutely meaningless in this city. There are couples who are working and once two adults in a house work they are basically nearly over the threshold at this stage. If they are not, they are getting penalised in Dublin City Council because they have just increased the rents to screw them, despite the fact that they are not getting a property that would stand up to the standards set by legislation for private landlords. There is a problem. If the price of housing keeps going up at the rate it is going, it means more and more people become dependent on social housing or housing supports, mainly HAP but also RAS. A third of the private tenancies in this country are now subsidised by the State which is absolutely crazy. It is crazy that the State is now beholden to private landlordism. We should have gone away from that. We had moved away from it even when there was no funding there. When there was no money, there was availability of social housing. The lack of investment and the lack of building have forced us into a place where couples and families who are trying to buy are now competing against the private sector, the vulture funds or even just small-time capitalists who want the property because they know it will pay for itself through their mortgage. They are sometimes fighting against the local authority as well which causes its own problems. I could go into a whole list of problems in terms of the estate agents and how they are gaming the system at this stage and trying to drive up prices. That might be something that the Government could look at. If you want miscellaneous provisions, there is a whole area there that could regulate that market a lot better and stop them driving up the prices as well.

Sentiment score: -0.05