Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This amendment relates to a new section 29A proposed to be inserted into the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 that empowers the Minister to prescribe amendments to the terms of existing local authority tenancy agreements that are consequential to new or existing legislative provisions. It would not be appropriate to limit the application of this new section to procedures for repossessing dwellings only as proposed by the amendment as there are a range of terms of existing agreements that will need to be updated over time to reflect existing and future legislative changes. Without the proposed section included in the Bill, existing tenancy agreements needing updating to reflect legislative provisions would have to be terminated individually and the tenants offered new tenancy agreements containing updated terms and conditions. This is a very cumbersome way of updating tenancy agreements and could cause unfounded worry for tenants. The section 29A approach is much preferable, involving the Minster prescribing the changes to be made to existing agreements arising from specific enactments and housing authorities inserting the changes into the tenancy agreements and notifying the tenants accordingly.

The second part of the amendment seeks to confine the operation of the new section 29A to changes that are more favourable for tenants than their existing terms. I cannot accept this restriction on the application of the new section because it would rule out using the procedure for estate management changes to existing agreements that might be less favourable for individual tenants but much more beneficial for the residents of an estate as a whole. An example of this would be changes to tenancy agreements for apartments where new conditions relating to household behaviour could improve the quality of life of everyone living in the apartment complex concerned. My concern is that every individual one would have to be changed rather than doing it this way, which may be more efficient.