Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I must apologise because I am splitting time between here and another committee, which is ongoing right now. At the very beginning, I have an obligation to declare, before I ask any questions, that I have been involved in the rental market since I was 19. I provide accommodation to students, workers, families on HAP and RAS, local authority applicants for housing, doctors, nurses, Ukrainians and all sectors of society. When I am speaking and asking questions, I am obviously using my own life experience in this business but I am also speaking on behalf of the many people I deal with in County Kerry on a daily basis who are involved in the provision of housing. I deal with auctioneers on a daily basis. I would like to think I know a lot about the housing market. I want to preface what I am going to say and the questions I am going to ask by saying I am sure it is a great source of wonderment to the witnesses how people in Dáil Éireann, who shout most about the need for housing, are serial objectors. They object not to ten or hundreds of houses but to thousands of houses. We have TDs who, to their credit, have made 3,000 or 2,800 - and 5,000 by one TD - objections to housing in their own constituencies. They are serial objectors, and at the same time, they are saying we have a housing crisis. Many people in Ireland do not realise that. They do not realise we have serial objectors who use their positions as TDs and Senators to continuously object to housing. That is one of the mysteries of the world.

There was one thing that I was grateful for. I think it was Mr. Hall who said it. He was a small bit factually incorrect when he talked about 40% tax. We must make it quite clear. The actual average rate of tax that is paid is 56%, for example, on €1,000 of rent. I agree because I am dealing with people on a daily basis who are on these housing lists and are paying higher rents. Everybody has to think when they talk about greedy property owners. I welcome the fact that the witnesses are not talking about landlords because we got rid of those people a long time ago. What we have is property owners who rent out properties. That is what they are. They used their heads and borrowed money in the majority of instances, unless they inherited property, which is rare enough. When they get in €1,000 in rent, that is €460. They have €460 to service the bank, insure the property and maintain it to the highest of standards. I hear politicians talking about bad people in that sector of society. Of course, there is bad among everybody. However, the majority of people are good. People talk about religious persons and say, "Well there were bad people". Of course there were but the vast majority of them are very good people. The vast majority of people who are into property are very good people too, and if they were not there, we would be relying on our local authorities throughout the country. This is no criticism of this Government. Absolutely not. I am talking about this Government, the last Government and going back as many decades as one likes to go. We need people involved in the private property market because if they are not there, we would have many more people who would not have accommodation or a place to stay.

My own belief is that I have no problem with people starting out in life renting but I love to see people then getting sorted. It could be that they are allocated a local authority house, and have to wait the seven, ten or 11 years - it depends on where they are - but they would get their own local authority house. There are also the many people, for example, who came to Dublin many years ago and lived in bedsits, which geniuses in government thought it was a good idea to get rid of. They would be damn glad of enough bedsits now if they had them. That will tell you that you cannot rely on politicians a lot of the time. People came to this city from all over, and to other cities, and they rented for a while. Eventually they got going themselves. Now, of course, that is getting harder and harder to do because of the cost of property. Why is property so expensive? There is no supply. Why is there no supply? First, it is so difficult to get planning, when one has all these people objecting. Then, the banks are not lending anymore, and the sums do not actually work out anymore. It is not financially viable now in Ireland to buy a property and rent it out. It makes no sense, whether that is a guesthouse, house or apartment.

Any person would tell you that you would want to have something wrong with you to consider going into that business right now. Between the politicians and media that are on top of you and the fact that you are giving away 56% of whatever you bring in in tax, you would be deranged, insane and fit to be locked up somewhere to think you could make profit out of this.

At the same time, we have politicians shouting about greedy people. If we take away all the greedy people, what will we be left with? We will have a hell of a lot more. The people who shout the most about housing in Dáil Éireann and everywhere else never provided so much as cover for a hen. If you were relying on those people to do something positive, I can tell you that they are doing nothing positive. What is being proposed, including the incentives, is absolutely ridiculous. The only good scheme is the one that helps a very small number of people in a very small way. I refer to the rent-a-room scheme and the expansion of it. That was a great scheme. It was brought in many years ago by, I think, Bertie Ahern. It was a good, sound, sensible scheme. If a person had a spare room in their house, they could rent it out and obtain tax relief on the income involved.

We need meaningful changes. In my own stupidity, I thought that because of the crisis the Government would realise that it needed to do something meaningful in the budget. I was waiting for it to happen with previous budgets but it did not. Neither did it happen with the most recent budget. What is being proposed now is absolutely nothing. I very much appreciate the witnesses being here and I appreciate their experience. However, if anybody thinks that the existing incentives will encourage one person to stay in the private rented market, they are raving. At the moment, we have an exodus out of the rental market. We do not have a supply coming on stream because nobody is getting into the market. Those in the market are getting out of it. The only people who will stay at it are those who are long established. I am not talking about big people in this at all. Rather, I am talking about people with one or two or five or ten different properties that they might have rented out. People who have been at it a long time might stay at it. Will there be any such thing as new people coming into it or anything like that? Not at all. If people watch “Oireachtas Report” or “The Week in Politics”, that is enough to send them straight to the auctioneer to say, “Sell it right away. Get rid of it because I do not want this hassle." Why would they want the hassle?

My life experience tells me that you deal with some of the nicest people in the whole world and you get to see them going through their stages in life, namely, being young, starting out and then going off on their own. It is lovely to see that. However, you certainly have the hiccups along the journey as well. Those hiccups can be very expensive. Nobody in politics wants to admit that because it is not a popular thing to talk about. Those are the nightmares that some people go through. Politicians would not want to repeat those stories at all because there are no votes whatsoever in what I am referring to. That should be camouflaged and hid under the table. I have dealt with an awful lot of property owners over the years - not just in Kerry but throughout the country – who have told me what they have been put through and the fact that people can now stay in a property for a very long time and not pay not so much as one penny of rent. I would hate to see people being painted with the same brush. Definitely, the majority of people are sound, honourable, straight, respectable people, as are the majority of the property owners. Of course, there are rogues on all sides.

Regarding regulation, which is great, I compliment our local authorities on the standard they set. In other words, housing inspections are brilliant. Whether it is from the point of view of fire safety, ventilation and so on, it is great to have that sort of regime. It is proper and right. It is no more than farm safety and having things right on the farm or having things right on a building site. Things must be right in your sector as well. Remember, one thing that is definitely not right is to be paying 56% tax and to think you will be providing that service and the Government is putting no incentive whatsoever in place.

If any of the witnesses were the Minister for Finance tomorrow morning and budget day was looming, what would they say with regard to taxation? What would they say with regard to trying to incentivise the market? I do not care who will be in power in the future. If I thought they could, I would be delighted, but I cannot in my lifetime see any Government being able to provide all of the accommodation needs for the different people, whether it is students, workers or people waiting on the housing list. Where will they put them all?

Just to show how foolish policies can be, remember it is not that long ago when, in all seriousness, a person said that after four months of being here, we will give people their own homes and a legal right to them. That was to people coming into this country. Imagine making a promise like that to people who are not in the country. Where did they think those homes were going to come from at a time when we have thousands of people languishing on our own housing lists? Those people could come here and we would guarantee them a legal right to a home. They could have sued the State if that law had been adopted. If they were here for four months and did not get a key to their own liveable property, be it apartment or house, that was assigned to them, they could have sued the State. We were actually going down that path. We had people in the Dáil shouting about it and saying, “This is great. Bring it on.” Where were the houses and apartments going to come from? People are living in cuckoo land. Some people’s lack of knowledge of the housing market is frightening.

At my clinics on Fridays, Saturdays and Monday nights, I hear from hundreds of people. I voted against the abolition of the eviction ban because I thought it was going to cause an awful lot of people to face having to leave their properties. The reason I thought it was wrong at the time – I still do and have been proved right – is because the number of people now on notice to leave their properties is frightening beyond belief. These people are coming to me with horror in their eyes, saying they have been served with that paper and have to leave. Where will they go? There is nothing in the market for them to go to. These are people who were paying their rent. Of course, I respect the property owners. Perhaps they want to sell because of all the reasons I have outlined. However, where will those people go? It is an impossible situation, and what is being proposed will not solve it. If any of the witnesses were Minister for Finance tomorrow, what would they do? I hate to put them on the spot but I would love to hear their answers.