I wanted to get onto the housing committee. I am not a member of the committee but I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill again and support the amendments that were tabled, which relate to reviews, reports and caps. I have already said that I support the Bill in principle and the concept behind it but what is being proposed raises so many questions and concerns that, as others have mentioned, it is hugely unlikely to do what it is intended to, unless the intention is purely to increase supply and increase the profits of large developers and real estate investment trusts that are largely from outside the country. To give an example, I see the logic of providing exemptions for new builds linked solely to the consumer price index to try to get more construction going. I get the concept that the State needs to get other people building and more supply into the market. Eventually, that supply will, hopefully, stabilise prices or bring them down but there is a huge question over the market reset, as proposed here. There could have been a happy medium in which some form of an increase was provided but it was capped, rather than being entirely a so-called market increase, because, as others have said, housing should never be just left to the markets. It is about people's daily lives. I have a constituent who has fallen into arrears because it took them a long time to get a housing assistance payment. They are now asking if the local authority can give them homeless HAP because the landlord has indicated that they will take the homeless HAP if the council pays and the tenant they cannot pay the rent. The council is saying, however, that it is an existing tenancy, so the person, once they are evicted, will get the homeless HAP but they are now going to have to pay a much higher rent and the State is going to have to pay a much higher rent. The cost of HAP this year will be, I think, over €570 million. If that €570 million was used to build houses, we would get between 4,000 and 6,000 houses, which is not the number of houses needed. If you were trying to develop a system, you would not have brought in HAP in the first place, but we are kind of stuck with it now. That is the problem. As rents rise and people cannot afford to pay them, the taxpayer will essentially foot the bill. We have had various suggestions about housing, including that the State should become the single biggest developer. Successive governments have argued against that idea, saying it is not feasible, might breach the Stability and Growth Pact, etc. However, we need to look at the actual cost of housing delivery. We have not had a serious discussion about having a State real estate investment trust whereby people, through the credit union or some other means, would contribute towards the purchase or construction of housing. They would be stakeholders but it would be a social enterprise. There may be a return on the investment but it would be a lot less than the super-profits these companies are going to make. This approach would lead to affordable rents going forward because if it is left to the private market, the market will take its toll. I will digress slightly but the same principle applies. In Lucan, South Dublin County Council, in its wisdom, did not have its social enterprise company tender for the operation of the swimming pool. Instead, it was let out to a company called Aura Leisure, which is very successful and competent in its own field. However, there was no underlying subsidy. Now we have a public pool where people are paying commercial prices because it was left up to a commercial operator to manage it. In every situation where you bring in a cut, the developer or investor will take a much bigger cut than the Government or local authority would take in terms of the common good. I also refer to what others have said about the incentive to end tenancies sooner than would otherwise be the case. I think Deputy Boyd Barrett spoke about the situation in relation to an extra family member.

Sentiment score: 0.14

There is no absolute clarity on whether a house would be deemed unsuitable because there might be, say, an extra child or a boy and girl and then all of a sudden there is overcrowding. The landlord can tick a box and they have an excuse to get them out and then look at ways they can increase their income. Those types of unknowns are very worrying. The one I mentioned on Second Stage was the mindset of landlords trying to find a way. They might think, “Sure I have a family member. We’ll try to get them into the house for a couple of months and that will cover the family need.” I also raised the issue, which was not answered, around enforcement. How do we know the properties are meeting the family need criteria? How many extra people will be employed to investigate it, for example? I have already mentioned that the Residential Tenancies Board is massively underfunded. It is 18 months since I submitted a case about a very dodgy landlord who has multiple properties, is in breach of multiple planning regulations and is not registered with the RTB, and there has been no comeback. I am sure that situation is multiplied throughout my constituency and everyone else's as well. We do not have those checks and balances. We have what in a sense is an attempt by the Government to do something visionary and be seen to tackle the crisis. It sets a new market rate and there is the 2% cap going forward. It looks very good in principle. However, let us take the smaller landlords, for example. I am thinking of a person who owns one property. There may be a number of TDs with one property although I know there are TDs with multiple properties where it is a business. I have been dealing with a lot of these types of landlords. From talking to people, the smaller landlord is the one who wants someone to mind the property for them. They often treat the second property as their own because they have inherited it or it is an investment so that when they are in retirement age they have a steady income. They might let a company manage it and they get a percentage of it. They would prefer to have a lower rent but with very steady tenants because, as well as the nightmare, greedy, obnoxious, unrelenting landlords, you also have a minority of tenants who are nightmare tenants. The small landlord wants an easy life and they are the type of people we should be encouraging to stay in the market and not the massive investors who are treating it as an income stream. The latter might be more efficient in terms of managing multiple property units but they will keep pushing up the prices. It is about affordability. As these smaller landlords are selling up, a lot of the homeless hubs are full and overcrowded, so when the tenant eventually finds a new place the rents have gone up massively and they may not be able to afford to pay those rents. If they are able to pay, it will be with the assistance of the local authority which in years to come will need increased HAP thresholds and payments, and that will come from taxpayers' money and State money, to keep the system going. All that money is coming from one source but it is going to the developers and the big investor funds - the institutional landlords. They are the ones siphoning our collective money away. That is why we need to look at housing as a social enterprise rather than for-profit. This Bill does make an attempt to do a noble thing. I will not get into attacks on the Government where people say it has no compassion or that everyone is in the pockets of investors. Although historically Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have received a lot of largesse from developers, I believe that has died down as a result of legislation that has been brought in. We do still have cosy relations between politicians and developers at an individual level, however, and we have to think about having a cosier relationship with our constituents – the people who are suffering through increased prices and rents – and think about their common good and everyone’s well-being. That is why I support the amendments. I support the concept of this Bill but we need to look at it more from the perspective of the individual or family living in the house rather than the people making the profit out of it.

Sentiment score: 0.09