Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the sincere approach to this legislation. I hope that we can build on this and that the officials from the Minister of State's Department might be willing to meet me to discuss this.

I am very familiar with the process of expansion of the city boundary and it certainly caused plenty of headaches and challenges, in my experience. It was something that needed to happen and it did end the partition of my own native Togher, which was split across two local authorities for 40 years. The intention was that the 2019 legislation was to designate the northern part of the electoral area as a rent pressure zone. It was purely for the purposes of rent pressure zones and nobody is, by any manner or means, looking to upend the current boundaries. However, if that is clumsily worded, it is something we can work towards.

The Minister made one point in his speech that comes back to the kind of answers I would have received in the past. He referred to the average rents in the Carrigaline area being above the non-greater Dublin area standardised average rent of €1,047. He stated that rent inflation in the local electoral authority, LEA, has been above 7% in just three and not four of the last six quarters and that Carrigaline does not fully satisfy the criteria for designation as an RPZ at this time. There are a couple of problems with that. This applies to over half and closer to two thirds of the area. I want to give a sense of how we got to figure of 1,200. The RTB is not able to tell us precisely how many renters are in the relevant part of the electoral area but it is able to tell us the number of tenancies in the whole electoral area, which is 3,394. It is also able to tell us the proportion of registered tenancies in both parts, and 35.4% are registered tenancies. Unless there is some strange anomaly and there is a greater congregation of tenancies in the northern part than the southern part, which I do not expect, then I think a figure of about 1,200 is a reasonable conclusion to draw.

To come back to the problems with that statement, if two thirds of the tenancies are in a rent pressure zone, to say it has been increasing in four of the last six quarters would be rather a damning indictment of the rent pressure zone, given the whole of the area would still be racing above the level at which it had to be so designated. The controlled part and the uncontrolled part together would have to be above the rate and the Minister of State can clearly see the problem with that. The second problem, which we have already covered, is that for the uncontrolled part, the data are not being collected for that part alone so we do not know if rent increases in that part have exceeded the rates required. The third problem is that we have now had four years of rent increases without any protection. For maybe the last 20 quarters, renters might have had the rate increases that would be required during the whole of that time but none of that counts towards the fact the rent is now at such an unsustainable level and could increase further. That is a problem. The fourth problem is that it was said that, accordingly, Carrigaline LEA does not fully satisfy the criteria. Strictly speaking, the majority of Carrigaline LEA is a rent pressure zone, so there are a number of problems with that approach.

How do we solve this? There are a number of ways. The electoral division approach is a potential solution in most instances. As it happens, this affects two electoral areas because most of the rent pressure zones, at least in a geographic sense and in terms of the territory covered, were designated after the last local elections and redrawn.

This is the first local election since 1999 that elections have subsequently been fought on the same set of boundaries twice. Will there be changes next time? There could be. If there is, and we still have the rent pressure zone system, which I think we will, then we could have much more substantial distortions and anomalies and whether we are using the word anomaly or not there will be distortions and peculiarities because we have a lot more rent-pressure zones now than we did in 2018 or 2017. This will reoccur unless we find a solution now. Electoral divisions might be part of the solution but I am not sure if it is the only part. The electoral divisions in my area are quite large. There are only about eight electoral divisions in the whole Carragline electoral area. I think the data is probably sufficiently robust. It might not be in other areas. Some electoral divisions are quite small and that might not be adequate.

I do not think I agree with the idea that it would constitute some kind of political pressure to say where an area is. I do not think it undermines objectivity. Maybe we have to define what "substantial" means. Perhaps that is the solution so that a substantial amount of an area is within a rent-pressure zone already then the remainder is so designated. Maybe that requires an additional bit of objectivity. If you can do that and you have an objective measure of what substantial is then I do not think it is in any way political interference because the local electoral boundaries are not decided politically. What we are trying to do is to respond to a situation where the rent pressure zones which were set on electoral boundaries set by an electoral commission were subsequently changed. What we are dealing with here is the knock-on of two sets of independent decisions outside this House, namely the boundary commission for the 2014 local election and the boundary commission for the 2019 election. All we are trying to do is put things right from the knock-on effects of those. I do not accept that it is in any way political interference. Maybe we have to define what "substantial" means or maybe there are other methods but I do not believe it is beyond us to find a solution. I hope the Minister of State will sit down with us and we can go through this.

Tá súil agam go mbeidh na hoifigigh sa Roinn sásta déileáil leis seo. Tá súil agam nach bhfuil siad den tuairim go bhfuil an t-ábhar seo chomh bheag sin gur féidir leis fanacht. Tá súil agam gur féidir linn réiteach a fháil air.

I am not precious about this legislation. I know from talking to Deputy Ó Broin that the housing committee is fairly backed up with legislation so if this finds itself in a residential tenancies Bill then that is fine with me. I do not mind what name is on it once we get a solution but it does not seem to be beyond us by any means to find a solution. Maybe defining what "substantial" is might be a more robust approach than electoral divisions. That probably needs a bit of figuring out. Is it possible that a very small area could be excluded after the next local election just because a small electoral division has been moved around? If so, what is the solution if the data cannot be gathered on that? We should probably explore that a bit more and hopefully we can do that. I thank the Minister of State and all the Deputies, Deputies Nash, Ó Murchú and Ó Broin, for speaking on this Bill.

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