Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There has, clearly, been a policy switch to go along with the change in the choices people are making because of what has happened in the property market. It is appropriate that we have legislation to govern the rented sector.

The Bill might work in principle. I ask if it will work in practice. I am not filled with confidence in the Private Residential Tenancies Board. If constituents come to me with a tenancy problem, such as a tenant being unable to recover a deposit or a landlord being unable to collect rent, I advise them to go to the Private Residential Tenancies Board, but with the health warning that they should not expect anything to happen for at least 12 months. That is not a solution for people. One of the biggest elements of the problem has been the non-return of deposits. The setting up of a deposit scheme, separate from the board, will address this issue, but it must do so. The board has lost credibility. It is overloaded with work and the number of staff is insufficient to deal with complaints in a timely manner.

We are brilliant at creating problems and then trying to resolve them. Many problems have arisen with the centralising of systems. We remember the medical card fiasco. The SUSI third level grants fiasco is ongoing. While the centralising of this service for the private rental sector was, in principle, not a bad idea, it does not work in practice. Responsibility for certain problems was shifted from local authorities to the board, but many of these problems were not being resolved at local authority level in the first place. It would be useful to take a look at the capacity of this organisation to deliver. If it does not deliver to the growing private rental sector, problems will arise that will have to be resolved down the line.

The board must have credibility. People will judge it very quickly. If they find it does not resolve their problems, they will see no point in going to it. If the board takes a ridiculous length of time to resolve a problem, people will dismiss it. We are told it will take, typically, two to three months for one of the tribunals to hear an appeal. Can we honestly say that? What arrangements were considered to ensure this is the timeframe we are talking about? Two to three months is not unreasonable, but more than that would be. Organisation must match the legislation. Let us not fool people. I do not have a problem with some of the initiatives in principle but I question whether they will work in practice.

There is a great variety of housing associations and co-operatives. Some are very strict and some are so loose that residents have had to take on the entire responsibility for management. They cannot get insurance and have had to do major repairs because the governance element of the housing association has all but disappeared. In others, a tenant may not hang a picture on the wall without applying for permission in duplicate. This variety is going to cause us a problem.

Legacy issues will present the Private Residential Tenancies Board with a new range of problems that have not been encountered so far. The biggest problem I have come across in the private rented sector is in the area of rent capping.

The Taoiseach said in the Dáil a few weeks ago, when someone said top ups were being paid, that those people were breaking the law by topping up but the rent caps in some parts of the country are so far below market rents that they will lead to families being made homeless. I have been speaking to the Minister for Social Protection about this for the past year. The problem manifests itself in different ways throughout the country but in an area like north Kildare, where some places are part of the Dublin commuter belt, it is not possible to find property to rent for the amount allowed under the rent cap.

In Threshold's report for last year, 61% of clients surveyed reported their landlords sought additional top up payments. The new arrangement, a good idea in principle, avoids two application processes to get rent assistance, whereby a person must be an approved housing applicant to then get rent assistance. It will go to the local authorities and it is likely there will be issues like this appearing at the Private Residential Tenancies Board as a consequence. We must be realistic about what is happening. My experience in north Kildare is that almost everyone is topping up. Those who are not have been in their accommodation for many years and have a good relationship with the landlord.

People have a notion that individuals end up homeless but I am talking about families with children. I am told by parents that they have ten weeks to find new accommodation and it is impossible to find a place in the area. They will have to take their children out of school and move to another part of the county or even the country. We will end up with families in hostels being shown on "Prime Time" and speaking on "Liveline" before the penny drops. We want to avoid this at all costs but it has already started. This is the issue that crops up most in my constituency office and is the one issue I feel completely frustrated in doing something about. There is no advice we can give people on this. The Taoiseach said these people are doing something illegal and we must pass on the information if they are topping up. There are so many people doing it that we all know it is happening.

Another issue that crops up is how to find rented accommodation, even more than deposits, which is a problem in towns like Maynooth where there is a lot of student accommodation. A further issue is anti-social behaviour, where one family can cause misery for everyone around them. If we move to a system where people can be moved on only to cause the same problems elsewhere, we are not dealing with the problem. We must change the culture if tenure is going to change. Landlords must see this as a long-term issue. On the other side, there must be a realistic mechanism for dealing with anti-social behaviour, which happens in private rented and local authority accommodation. It is a small number of people but they cause major problems.

Delays are a big issue in the private rental market. There will be an increased demand for the services of the PRTB while the number of staff will be reduced from 50 to 35 this year alone. How can there be a better service with less people when there is already a problem? This must work in practice because there is no point in just having good principles. If we can deal with issues through mediation rather than the courts, it would be preferable. It is less costly and more accessible to people who would not have the funding to undertake a court case. The mediated approach is a good idea but it must work in practice.

Someone mentioned the need for anti-social behaviour strategies in local authorities. We have a lot of organisations and institutions that must have strategies but there is no point in having them if they are not used. We have a resistance to doing things on a multi-agency basis. Often problems require multi-agency solutions and I would like to see something in that respect in addition to the PRTB being initiated. Often training is needed, including for tenants, and there might be Garda or HSE involvement. That is part of the governance solution that must be considered if we are to change the choices people make. If issues are dealt with comprehensively, it often needs more time for the agencies but this approach offers a longer term solution, which is to everyone's benefit.

The Threshold report was useful because it showed the shift in tenure and much of that shift was economic. People no longer feel the need to get on to the property ladder, they are now happy to rent. This is not just about having a roof over a person's head, it must be someone's home as well. The notion that the tenant cannot even paint a wall must be changed, so people can make a place into a home rather than just a temporary arrangement, particularly when children and schools are involved, and landlords can see the long-term nature of the tenancy. Often, landlords are willing to take less of a rent if they are satisfied with the arrangement and the person is looking after the house. We must get to a point where that is seen as a return on the investment people made in the property, often as a form of pension.

This is a changing area and other issues will crop up.

We have not even begun to talk about the shared ownership loan. Many of those houses will come back into the hands of the local authorities because there will not be the ability to fund the other side of the mortgage, particularly for people who got the loans at the upper end of the age scale. They will not have the time in their working lives to assume the other side, nor do I believe there will be the finance to offer people. I believe that group of people will end up back with houses within the local authority stock.

I rang a number of auctioneers in my area to find out why they will not get involved with rent assistance. Essentially they said that it is too complicated to deal with the centralised system where the rent assistance is allocated. It is so complicated that it is completely off-putting for them and they feel they would be unable to remedy the situation if the rent was not paid.

Rights that have been developed over time in the rental sector are being circumvented by some of the policies applied under rent assistance. A person, who has been in a house for five years, assumes a certain number of weeks' notice to quit that property. However, a person on rent assistance will be told he or she has 13 weeks to find somewhere else even though the tenant may have a legal entitlement to six months' notice. However, the Department is breaking the contract by virtue of being unable to pay. So one side of the Government is granting people rights, but the other side is interfering with those rights, which is a problem that needs to be addressed urgently. The Government cannot demand of people, who are in the private sector and not getting rent assistance, that they respect the rights that are on the Statute Book while at the same time intervening in a way that infringes on those rights with pretty devastating consequences for many families.

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