Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will be very brief, because this is short legislation. The intention behind the Bill is to clarify the standing of student-specific accommodation with respect to the powers of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, with particular regard to the issues of rent reviews, rent pressure zones and access to dispute resolution at the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB.

Sinn Féin takes the view that student licences and private student accommodation are already covered under the 2004 Act. That view has been confirmed to the committee by the Residential Tenancies Board and the board repeated this view in its written submission today. We are not seeking to change the law, but to make it more explicit. Everybody will accept that there is a degree of confusion as to whether student-specific accommodation provided by private landlords or investors is covered in the 2004 Act.

The legislation was provoked by very substantial rent increases proposed by private student landlords in Galway and Dublin at the end of last term. Members will know, because we heard from the students at the time, that rents increased by between 18% and 24%. Our view was that an amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 was required to ensure that everybody was fully clear as to where these licences stood with respect to the legislation. People will be aware of the impact of very high rents on students. If a student is asked to pay rent of €1,000 a month over nine months, it could act as a significant barrier to his or her education. As we heard from the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, students are being forced out of education and prevented from taking their preferred option because of these charges.

I found the written submissions from the Departments of Housing, Planning and Local Government and Education and Skills a little disappointing. We can go through the detail with the relevant officials when they appear. However, I did not get a sense from the submissions that the Departments appreciated the urgent need to address this issue. Student rents were set at very high levels at the start of this term. Unless we rectify the matter now, this will happen again. This is, therefore, an urgent issue.

Another problem with the Departments' approach is that both submissions repeatedly state that the solution to the affordability crisis in student accommodation is supply. We know that supply in and of itself will not address the issue unless it is accompanied by some degree of affordability. That is a weakness.

The submission from the Residential Tenancies Board is very helpful. It confirms that licences are already covered under the legislation. However, there is a lack of clarity. The RTB submission also helpfully identifies two weaknesses in our Bill and, as its sponsors, it is important that we acknowledge that. Later today, the RTB will make the case that it would be helpful to have a definition of student-specific accommodation.

The Fianna Fáil Bill that was published around the same time as our Bill does that. It would be a helpful amendment to our Bill and it would be a good way of resolving the RTB's concern on our Bill. We would see such an amendment as friendly if and when we get to that on Committee Stage.

The other issue the RTB rightly raised is whether our Bill would have an unintended consequence of giving students access to Part 4 tenancy rights. That is not the intention of our Bill and that is not the current legal situation. We can tease this out with the RTB but with some advice from it we could make an appropriate amendment to our Bill to ensure the rights that students are looking for around rent reviews, rent pressure zones and dispute resolutions are the rights they would accrue and the Part 4 tenancy rights would not apply to licences because the whole purpose of licences is that they are shorter term. We would be more than happy to accept amendments on that.

The Minister is bringing forward a residential tenancies amendment Bill either before the end of this year or early next year. Many of us in this committee have indicated support for it in principle, subject to the detail, but it would be much more helpful if the Minister dealt with this issue in that Bill. Deputy Darragh O'Brien and myself have met with the Minister to encourage him to do that. If he does that in the Bill or by way of amendment on Committee and Report Stages, Sinn Féin would be more than happy to withdraw its Bill, but in the absence of the Minister bringing forward his own proposition, we would prefer if the committee would proceed with ours, if only to send a clear signal to the Minister that the view of this committee is that we need this issue clarified and resolved as a matter of urgency. However, if the Minister finds a way of resolving this in his legislation, we would fully support that and withdraw the Bill at whatever stage it is at in the Oireachtas process.