Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Ms Walsh is very welcome. I take a different view on her experience. She said she had a great deal of experience of dealing with local authority issues on the other side of the fence. It is very valuable to bring the experience from the other side of the fence to the statutory side.

While Ms Walsh may not have been on the board we all say a bottom-up approach is good. I welcome that in any organisation because very often people on the inside are there so long that - although that is not the case in the PRTB - they can be blinkered and say the old ways are the best. The bottom-up approach brings new thinking which I welcome, having worked on the ground. In Ireland people did not have security of tenure until the introduction of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. People's views of renting are changing. In Germany people rent for life and no-one thinks anything of it, whereas in Ireland everybody wanted to own their own patch, as in The Field. People felt it was best to own their own house. The PRTB is very important now because people cannot own their own homes. They are stuck in places that they either own-----