Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is one of the most problematic and objectionable sections in the Bill. It goes to the heart of a policy shift which began with a document produced by the Department in either 2011 or 2012. That shift involved a move away from direct provision of council housing to a situation where the provision of social housing was outsourced to landlords. This was slightly glossed over by what is a positive idea, namely, that if a person happens to be in receipt of housing support, there should be no disincentive for him or her to work. Such a disincentive currently exists under the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. That element of what the Minister of State is trying to do is positive. In addition, it is both sensible and positive that all of the matters in question should come within the remit of local authorities rather than a plethora of agencies or Government Departments. However, what is proposed in this section presents a major problem. In the first instance, people are going to be removed from the housing waiting list. Essentially, it states that a short-term solution is, in fact, a long-term one. That is absolutely not the case, particularly because we are institutionalising and making permanent a massive outflow of public money into the pockets of landlords. The latter is incredibly wasteful and we need to move away from doing it. The major difficulty with what is proposed in this regard is that it is just not going to work. Landlords are running away from arrangements of any sort which involve local or rent allowance. They either state - in the most horrendous and discriminatory manner - that they will not accept these arrangements or they run away from agreements with tenants for whose business they were desperate a number of years ago when matters were not going so well.

This is just not going to work. It is also going to cause major problems in terms of relationships between tenants, landlords and local authorities. As matters stand, nobody knows who is responsible for what. For example, landlords are discussing matters with tenants which perhaps they should be bringing to the attention of local authorities. Questions are also arising as to who is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of properties. I wonder whether councils have proper oversight in respect of matters of that nature. There are major problems in respect of this matter.