Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When we are having a conversation about tax breaks or tax incentives to keep landlords in the market, we have to look at what has happened with small landlords. I referenced this earlier. For a proper, functioning housing market we need every existing player in the market to continue contributing to the supply. In the past when we had a housing market that functioned quite well, there were many small landlords contributing and investing their time and money in a house or two houses as their pension pot, which added to the supply. We always had that. We always had first-time buyers and affordable and social housing. That is when it was working. I accept that we will see more and more taxpayers' money on the table as well. When anybody takes their investment off the table, we are left with less supply. In the past ten or 11 years, a lot of changes were made that make renting out houses a lot more complicated. Those changes were in favour of tenants because we wanted to improve the market for tenants, and rightly so. I have no qualms about any of that but it has made it more complicated. You do see some small landlords deciding to take their money off the table and invest it elsewhere. That reduces the supply of housing in the long run. This is somewhat of an incentive to keep them in the market because we want everybody who was traditionally in the housing market back in the housing market along with more. We are not going to fix the supply of housing solely with taxpayers' money because we cannot just do all social and affordable housing. We need to see a spend of probably €12 billion or €13 billion a year on housing. The State can contribute up to €7 billion of that in all the different forms but we need other players as well. There has to be some skin in the game for everybody. While the tax initiative has not changed much, all the rules and regulations have changed. I think they are fine and they are right because they are pro-tenant and they assist with all that but it does change the view of some landlords in the market and we want to try to keep them in it and keep their supply there as well.