Professor Eoin O'Sullivan:

I do not know why there is that outflow and if it is to do with registrations. There could be a methodological issue in that there is just a decline in registrations rather than an outflow from the sector. As a proxy, it would seem that after a period since 2004 of continuous increases in registrations we had a decrease in the last year and a quarter. Why is that? I suspect much of it has to do with the market having picked up and people are simply selling their properties at this stage. Perhaps there could be some type of incentivising scheme for local authorities to have first bids on these properties so they could acquire these properties coming on the market quickly. I know they are doing some of it.

They could have a link with the Residential Tenancies Board so when they see a tenancy is not being registered they could ask what is happening with it and whether they could potentially get access to it for the housing assistance payment or simply to purchase it.

In terms of the spending of the Residential Tenancies Board and section 34 we could state that on a temporary basis a tenancy cannot be terminated for certain reasons, particularly family possession. The provision is extraordinarily generous at present. As the Chairman said, there is a need to strike a balance to keep landlords in the sector. From my history lessons, in 1915 we brought in rent control on a temporary basis and it was 1981 before we got rid of it. There may be some suspicion that temporary measures stay in place for a long period so we may want to place some guarantee on this.

The issue comes up consistently that this is about the relevant article in the Constitution on the right to private property and the question is asked as to whether this needs to be further tested to see whether the common good overcomes these provisions. This certainly has been the argument by the landlord associations for a long time. They state we cannot do this because of the constitutional provision on private property. There may be a case for the Department to obtain an opinion on this and on whether it is possible in the forthcoming Bill to legislate on this issue.

Deputy Ó Broin raised an issue on the numbers and the difference between exits and preventative cases. This is documented in the Dublin Region Homeless Executive reports. The table presented is somewhat misleading in that the two categories are aggregated in the table but the text below it separates them out. We can see clearly for the Dublin Region Homeless Executive the prevention cases versus the exit cases. It does not happen for any other local authority but I am not sure whether any other local authority has in place the innovative scheme the Dublin Region Homeless Executive has to prevent families from entering homelessness in the first place.