Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It was 2021. We are factoring in Covid-19. We know there will be a drop-off so the officials do not need to respond to that. That is a given and that is understood, but the number of prohibition notices that have been served out of those inspections is 15. Even if we track back, taking into account Covid-19, in 2018, approximately 28,000 inspections were carried out with 99 prohibition notices served. In 2019, 40,000 inspections were carried out with 106 notices served. In 2020, approximately 26,000 inspections were carried out with 57 notices served and, as I said, there were 11,700 inspections up to quarter 3 of 2021 with 15 notices served.

Do the officials agree that the number of prohibition notices served is extremely low? I ask that because I have visited people of late who are in receipt of the housing assistance payment. To describe the conditions they are living in as Dickensian would be to put it mildly. I understand the local authorities have a tough job to do, but I would like to see some language coming from the Department in respect of buttressing the inspections regime by way of ensuring there is a clear policy that the regulations, which are laid down in law, are adhered to such that people have the right to live in some sort of decent accommodation. I invite the officials to visit some of these dwellings for themselves. They will see just how poor the level of accommodation is. These people are caught in a major bind because they cannot go back to their landlord to ask him or her to fix this or that as they would be out on their ear before they know it.

This is a major issue right across society when we are paying €465 million on the housing assistance payment. We should look at the rent supplement figure from the Department of Social Protection for 2021. Under what we call provisional expenditure under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme 2021, the Department of Social Protection paid out €122,957,000 in rent supplement. We are paying out a massive amount of money. I can understand why we are doing so. We need to keep people in housing in the private rented sector until supply is sufficiently provided for, but the inspection regime is just not working. I ask the officials to please not come back to me with Covid-19 as a reason. A regime needs to be put in place such that the inspectorate is robust and local authorities are resourced commensurate with the number of properties in their purview.

That is something that needs to be addressed urgently. The Comptroller and Auditor General has given us the metric of 60,000 tenancies and €465 million, which is coming in at, give or take, €7,800 per tenancy. Obviously, there has been no provision to revise upwards the rent provision to reflect the market in 2017. The Secretary General will tell me there is a working group on that but there needs to be a greater degree of urgency. If I could have an answer to that in two minutes or less, I would be delighted because there is one other issue I would like to cover as well.