I am glad to get the opportunity to raise this problem at the Topical Issue forum today. I hope the Minister will take it seriously. I do not want to be laughed at like I was last week when I asked a question here. This is serious business for anyone who does not have a home and is trying to find a property to rent. In many instances, they can be hit with a traumatic event that they were never ready for. Since the Residential Tenancies Bill was mooted last year along with the idea that people would have to rent out houses for six years, many people have decided to get out. Hundreds of people have been to my office after getting a notice to quit and finding themselves with nowhere to go. One fellow came to me out of the back of a transit van, which is where he is staying. I have dealt with a lady with two young children – in fact, I have dealt with several such cases - bawling crying every Saturday in Killarney. A number of them are in to me constantly. The tenant in situ scheme would be a great scheme if it was working properly, but Kerry County Council says it cannot buy houses with the tenants in them because it is not being funded by the Department for any repairs or works that would be needed for it to buy the house. This is wrong as Kerry County Council could rent it back to the tenants at local authority rent prices and perhaps later sell it to the tenants when they get on their feet. All of us elected to this Chamber support the tenant in situ scheme to allow families to continue renting. As I said, if the tenants get on their feet, they could end up buying out the council. Will the Minister look at this scheme and sort it out, especially in Kerry? I do not know whether it is happening in other places. There are many vacant houses in our county. I gave the example previously of there being 54 between Kenmare and Kilgarvan, and within six or seven miles of Killarney town. People could step onto the TFI bus between Kenmare and Killarney, which passes every hour. It is a crying shame that so many of these are vacant when people are looking for houses. Will the Government dedicate a team to go around to see what would help people or incentivise them to rent the houses? The biggest problem is the fear people have that they will not be able to get the house back if they rent it out. There is a scheme for Ukrainians where €600 is paid by the State to the landlord tax free. The most important thing there is that if the landlord wants the house back, in that instance, they can get it within four weeks, not months and years as happens in many other cases. That has turned many landlords off because they cannot get their houses back when they want them. I will give an example. A man bought a house in Killarney but could not come back from Australia for 12 months. Someone begged him to rent it to them and he did so but when he came back from Australia after the 12 months, he could not get into his house for three years. Those are the blockages that need to be removed to ensure people rent out these vacant houses. There are many of them around the country. I ask the Government to deal with that.

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I ask again about the tenant in situ scheme. The Minister of State said money has been allocated to it. Will he talk to Kerry County Council to see what is wrong and why it cannot operate the tenant in situ scheme? Elected members in Kerry have been asking the local authority to buy land banks to build local authority houses in small villages, such as Scotia's Glen, Gneeveguilla, Firies, Curragh, Currans and all these places. I hear the council is slow to buy these land banks because it will be hit with the residential zoned land tax. Is that right? That is serious. Where is the proposal to allow granny flats to be built behind residential properties? It was mooted about 12 months ago but nothing has happened since. Where is the proposal on modular homes? I do not see them materialising in Kerry. It was to be a faster way of delivering housing. The problem, which I raise here continually, is that many people in Kerry cannot build a house of their own because they cannot get planning permission. Who is dealing with that? Is it going to be sorted out? It is time it was. God damn it but if these people go to the expense of trying to build houses for themselves, surely the smallest bit of help we could give them is to give them a fair crack at getting planning permission. This urban regeneration clause is causing severe difficulty far from towns where people who never lived in a town are being denied the right to build houses. Will the Minister of State please do something about those things?

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The short-term places are not what I am talking about at all. It is the houses that are vacant and have nobody in them-----

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