Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I support the amendment and would be delighted if the Minister would accept it. We need a settled housing situation. The difficulty relates to the large local authority housing waiting list of some 43,000 people. However, local authorities cannot make that provision because they are grossly underfunded. At Government level, upwards of €440 million per year is being spent on a housing rental scheme that gives the taxpayer little return on expenditure.

I accept that the overwhelming majority of landlords are responsible, but it is disappointing that they have not all registered with the Private Residential Tenancies Board, PRTB. A serious push must be made to ensure that they register and Deputy Wall's amendment would go some way towards achieving this. It would make for a better regulated rental market and might substantially lessen our grá to own our homes. People would become more comfortable or settled in renting a home from free market landlords for their lifetimes. We must review this area.

The culture of "cute hoorism" — I do not know whether that is parliamentary language — or of slippery characters must be rounded up. It will take political courage initially to address the issue, but we must regularise the movers and shakers in towns or villages or on cities' edges. The long-term benefits to society would be substantial. The essence of the amendment would go some way towards ensuring that those landlords who are not behaving responsibly now do so.

The matter of social housing provision is a bad one, but everyone would agree that the primary issue is that of deposits. A number of constituents present at my constituency offices looking for deposits because local authorities no longer give them to people who qualify for rent subsidy payments. When they meet community welfare officers, CWOs, the officers shake their hands but do not supply deposits either. I accept that it is difficult for local authorities currently strapped for cash — indeed, they have always been strapped for cash — to expend substantial sums of money that will lie in a landlord's bank account at the cost of funding for other local authority functions. This unfortunate issue must be sorted out quickly. Like me, Members from every side of the House deal with the people in question on an almost daily basis.

See this speech in context