Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I have sympathy for landlords who, as a result of the crash, ended up in negative equity, needed to hold onto their starter home and became accidental landlords. Most of them did not want to be landlords and they are now selling on as property prices are reaching pre-peak levels. However, I do not have sympathy for the lobbyists asking that they can pass on a property portfolio with a 90% CAT write-down, equating to €3.5 million worth of an asset, and stating this will somehow provide a guarantee for the next generation while locking out from homeownership a generation of people who come from a less privileged background. As lobbyists, I commend them on managing to equate themselves with institutional investors, using words like “inequality". However, I firmly believe they should not be expecting the private renter, paying income tax on their own income that they work for daily, to pay both their mortgage and provide them with investment income. I am one of those people who is lucky enough to have a mortgage and secure housing. If I was to rent out my house at market rate and was treating it as a business and as my only income, it would be a long time before I hit the top rate of tax. What landlords collectively are complaining about is paying the same tax that most workers in this country pay.

We have a problem with funding housing supply and that is one of the main problems about the crisis we are having in the private rented sector because we are simply not supplying the houses that we should.

Most of us agree that rents are beyond the reach of many and the incomes that are set, all while people are dealing with an inflationary crisis. What the landlords here are stating, however, is that if rents fall, they will leave the sector. Renters cannot expect to have affordable rent linked to their income unless it is delivered by the State. Rather than vilifying landlords, as Senator Cummins stated, this discourse is probably just telling some hard truths from the perspective of renters to a vested interest group that wants all the flexibility but none of the conditions that come with providing people with the fundamental right of a home and security. It is clear that the private rental sector cannot and will not fulfil the housing needs of the population.

I do not see the argument for supporting landlords but I do see the argument for supporting renters. In the long term, that means putting people who belong in the social housing sector back into secure tenancies and cost rental, and not relying on the private rented sector to meet that social need. Any initiatives and incentives should be linked to the cost or to affordable rental and giving tenants security of tenure which, in my opinion, is a greater social need than people realising a full investment on their speculative asset. Most renters want to be able to buy that investment. It is not commissioned housing stock that investors are buying but they are competing with people and taking housing from them. I firmly believe that renters should have security and that security should be tied to their tenancy, not to their landlord. We need to ban evictions on the basis of landlords selling the property. Those buying a property as an owner-occupier should be able to move into it but if the property is being sold to another landlord, the tenant should have security of tenure. That may be a controversial opinion in this room but I do not think it is controversial among the public at large.

Would some of the landlord lobbyists be willing to participate in a buy-to-rent scheme where people give landlords pension income but would be able to buy the capital asset at the end if that was done?

What are the two things Threshold would do on immediately? All present agree that meeting social housing need through the private rented sector is not working. If there were two things Threshold could bring in, not just in the budget but generally, to stem the push of people from the private rented sector into homelessness, what would they be?

I am interested in Dr. Byrne's point in respect of home ownership. What initiatives would he put in place to support home ownership and people going from the private rented sector into home ownership?