Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I refer to pillar 4, which is the rental sector. Paragraph 4.1 says the Government will develop a rental strategy. With the homeless figures showing no sign of abating and the private rented sector being the place where people generally become homeless, the Minister will agree that this is urgent. Rebuilding Ireland says the Minister will deal with the issue of tenants in situwhere there is the sale of a property. We all know this has been happening for years. It is not new that landlords are using this as a way to evict people. In some cases, some people may be selling homes because of the banks, but there are also people who use it as a way to get rid of tenants. There has been very little strengthening of the protections for tenants. Is the Government going to bite the bullet and bring in legislation to amend the Residential Tenancies Act to prevent people being evicted for that reason? If a landlord wishes to sell a property, the law should be amended to ensure that it must be done with the tenant in situ. Does the Minister agree that it has come to the point that, notwithstanding the over-representation of landlords' rights in the Dáil, barriers must be erected to prevent landlords doing that? Another issue I have is refurbishment. It probably only applies where there is large-scale ownership of properties rather than in respect of individual landlords. When is this going to be brought out?

The third issue I want to raise with the Minister is one we raised when rent pressure zones were being introduced by the Minister's predecessor. We proposed an amendment to the legislation involved to provide that landlords would have to get a certificate from the RTB stating the rent for a property so that a new tenant would know what the rent was and would not have to negotiate over that rent from a position of having less power than a landlord looking at 30 others in a queue. If the Minister wanted to prevent the breaching of the rent pressure zone legislation, that is something he could implement. Clearly, breaches are happening when rents in Dublin have gone up 23% despite the legislation. I know the Minister will say that is because new tenancies are exempt from the legislation, but it is not just new tenancies. It is also because when someone moves out or is forced out, landlords bump up the rent. Nobody has any way to check it. A Bill is being proposed this week and we proposed an amendment over a year ago. It is a tiny demand on landlords to produce the certificate rather than to have tenants try to get the information out of them.

Is the committee taking HAP separately or is it part of rental?