Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

In analysing any situation we can see the glass as half empty or half full. Many Deputies have largely welcomed the Bill. It will be broadly supported. It is, however, limited in its cover and in what it does. We need to look at it in more depth.

The critical absence from the Bill has already been highlighted. The biggest issues of concern are, from a tenant's point of view, the withholding of deposits and, for landlords, rent being unpaid. Those issues are the two significant contributors to the caseload of the PRTB but they are the two areas that are excluded from the Bill. The Minister says this will be addressed later. That is doing things the wrong way around. If the Bill is to be comprehensive, adding this later is not adequate. We need to examine this inadequacy. We say the legislation will reduce delays and simplify procedures for dealing with disputes between landlords and tenants. Nobody will say that is a bad thing. We must look at the mechanisms being put in place to make that a reality. If we look at the actual situation, we have to say the Bill is trying to square a circle.

Unless resources are provided we cannot deliver on the legislation and we will not be contributing to improving the situation. We have seen the statistics. More than 2,000 cases are before the board. This, according to the board itself, represents an unprecedented 20% rise in the number of cases in the past year. Other Deputies highlighted issues such as the waiting time of between eight and 12 months.

With the embargo on public sector recruitment, the numbers in the organisation are due to fall from 70 to 33 staff. How will it deal with more applications with fewer staff to provide the efficient service the Bill claims it will deliver? It sounds good but behind the scenes the situation will get worse.

We are increasing the scope of the board to extend cover to voluntary and co-operative housing schemes. Most Deputies welcome that but I am not so sure. I have no problem with their inclusion but we must dig deeper and ask where we are going with social housing policy. There has been an explosion of these voluntary and cooperative bodies while there has been an erosion of local authority provision. Do we really need hundreds of these voluntary housing organisations? I am not so sure we do. These are some of the background issues the Minister of State must resolve before this legislation will deliver any meaningful change.

We must step back from the situation to look at the nature of accommodation provision in Ireland. We are in a peculiar hybrid situation where there has been an explosion of rental property. The slum owning, rack renting landlords of James Connolly's time are not new to this country but the landlord of today is very different from the traditional landlord who played that role. Many people have become involuntary landlords by virtue of the fact they cannot meet the mortgage payments on the home they bought at the height of the boom. Many of them have had to move back to their parents' houses or share with someone else, while renting their property to repay an unsustainable mortgage so the bank gets its money. In many cases, the rent is not even enough and they must make up the deficit.

Many retired people were encouraged to buy property, particularly those who found themselves with an inadequate pension fund, and their life savings are now going towards mortgage repayments while the property is a liability rather than an asset that could fund a pension. These people are not renting to make a profit and we must consider that. Many of these involuntary landlords need decisive action.

What is the benefit of the State paying rent subsidy for the private rental of those properties with unsecured tenure? There should be some sort of a scheme whereby the Government would take over those mortgages on the basis that much of the debt was written off when the banks were recapitalised. Those people should be allowed to get out of those contracts. That would then be a vehicle for the State to become the landlord, directly providing social housing, which would be a much better way of resolving disputes. Contrary to what people think, the management and tenant resolution process is far easier within the scope of direct provision by local authorities. The local authorities are in a much better position to deal with these issues than the private sector. This Bill must be seen in that context, where there is a new type of landlord and circumstances are different from before.

There has been a virtual collapse in social housing provision. No houses are being built and no NAMA properties are being transferred into the ownership of the local authorities. The best that is on offer at present is the long-term lease where the local authority or tenants engage in a ten year lease. That is a joke, where the local authorities take over these properties, pay rent on them for ten or 20 years, become responsible for the full maintenance for the property and at the end of that period they are handed back to the person who owns it and who has profited in that time while the person who was living there and considered it a home does not have any security other than the obligation of the local authority to rehouse him somewhere else. It undermines the idea of a home.

There has been an explosion in RAS properties, where people rent the property for a five year period. Is that better than what happened before? It is better than the rent supplement situation because the rent is calculated as if the property was a council house and the person can take up gainful employment if the opportunity arises and by some miracle he manages to get a job. He could then pay higher rent but would not lose all the benefits as used to happen under the old system. Does that, however, offer adequate security of tenure? No, because that person is still at the whim of the landlord if he or she wants to sell the house and the tenant cannot make changes. There are broader issues that must be discussed at greater length.

In some ways, this debate can be contradictory. We need more protection for landlords and we also need more protection for tenants. How do we balance the two sets of rights, particularly when they conflict? It is not an easy issue to deal with. I am not sure the legislation can achieve that. We have all experienced cases of tenants whose deposits have been withheld for the most ridiculous reasons, such as basic wear and tear that the landlord is lawfully responsible for. The landlord decides to chance his arm and withhold the deposit, making it very difficult for that person to move on, particularly if there is money from the HSE and there are issues around being unable to get a second deposit. It is an horrendous situation that must be addressed.

On the other side, landlords are in a very difficult situation. I had a recent case that highlights the new nature of landlords and the pressures people face. Their experience with the PRTB was not satisfactory and if we want legislation to improve that, we must take such cases into consideration. This couple were self-employed and their business dried up because of the recession. They had a second property with a large mortgage as an investment. As they were self-employed they had no social welfare entitlements and they were living off the rent from the second property. They registered with the PRTB and paid their money, doing everything by the book. Early last year, their tenant fell behind with the rent and by the middle of the year had stopped paying the rent at all. By now they were owed thousands of euro. They served the tenant with all the notices required and did everything by the book as instructed by the PRTB. The tenant was supposed to vacate the premises but did not and, instead, changed the locks. The people contacted the PRTB to secure help from the dispute resolution service but were told that although they had registered, they had failed to re-register. They were not aware of that requirement and despite being owed thousands of euro in rent, when they sought assistance from the board, they were told the case could not even be looked at until they gave the PRTB another €180. Even then the board could not say when the case would be heard, in spite of the fact that the tenant had not paid any rent for nine months. These people have virtually no income in the later years of their lives and will probably have to sell the house to realise anything at this stage. That gives us a glimpse into the complexities surrounding this issue.

The idea of tenants being protected from unscrupulous landlords is good on paper but there are measures in place that state the contract cannot be terminated pending an appeal to the board so landlords are waiting 12 months with somebody in situin their property.

The person in situknows that he or she can get away with living, basically rent free, for months while this process is being weighed up, and this results in significant financial hardship on landlords such as the couple I mentioned. What is a protective measure for the tenant has become a real source of coercion for the landlord in that case and it is clearly very unfair. We need a better balance. I am not sure that the Bill, as it is structured, but particularly the PRTB the way it is structured, can deliver on that. Even the good objectives of this Bill cannot be delivered if that board does not have the staff and if we do not have a criterion in the Bill which states that paragraph (k) should be dealt with in a month. That means investment and more resources going in, but if we are serious about tenants' rights and landlords' rights and improving the situation for both, we have no choice but to do it.

I would go back to the point I made at the start, that we probably are looking at this debate the wrong way round. In many ways it is indicative of the sort of creeping privatisation of social housing stock. It is wrong to move away from direct provision of housing, which was the norm years ago and now does not happen at all. It creates all sorts of problems and all manner of bureaucracy, and that is the elephant in the room.

There has been an explosion in the number of voluntary housing bodies. There are 700 of them in a country of this size, managing 25,000 units. Some of them are only for one dwelling here and there, and are minor, but I am not sure extending this type of control is good. Why do we need all of this duplication of separate housing organisations, with their own directors, management teams, offices, bureaucracy and administration, when there are 34 local authorities with fully trained staff who have experience over decades of housing issues and who can deal with many of these issues? It is like privatising the area.

Each of these not-for-profit bodies will be charged €90 to register with the PRTB. Let us be clear that they will not pay because they have no money and it will be the tenant in that property who will end up paying. The same tenant will end up paying for the property tax because those houses are included in the property tax, which will amount to a couple of hundred euro. When we know the statistics on rent arrears already. We are putting onerous pressure on tenants, almost making it inevitable that they will fall behind in their rent. When we know that half the families in the State have only €50 a month left when they meet their basic expenses, de facto between those measures we are adding significant amounts of extra rent making it more likely that these precise tenants will end up in front of the PRTB because they cannot pay their rent either. We need to stand back and look at how we are relying on the private sector too much.

I am aware that many of the non-traditional landlords, the new type, need tenants in their houses to repay their mortgages, but that is an unsustainable situation. It is linked to the overall mortgage crisis and the failure of the banks, despite being compensated, to write down those mortgages and deal with those properties in negative equity where borrowers cannot cope. We need an initiative so that those who are merely keeping those houses going and merely acting as a landlord simply to pay the banks can go into another process where they can hand back the property without being left still owning the banks loads of money, and so that they can get on with their lives. They never wanted to be a landlord, but who will step into the vacuum? The only one who can do that is the State in the form of the local authorities, but it does means the banks playing their part and accepting the fact that they have been compensated by the taxpayer already to the tune of billions of euro, and part of that was about writing down unsustainable mortgages. That must be added in.

We need to take on board what is best in terms of international experience on issues of security of tenure. In countries such as France, for instance, tenants are provided with a security whereby, if they rent their main residence, their rights are akin to the rights of a home owner, and that is what we need to do. We are not talking about houses, which are only bricks and mortar and a little furniture. We are talking about people's homes, their lives, their ability to raise their families in decency, etc. That means rights and responsibilities on both sides. However, we probably are looking at it slightly the wrong way round.

Nobody will oppose this Bill. It will go through to the next Stage. I am glad that the Minister stated that the issues of rent arrears and deposit retention will be addressed later on, hopefully before it concludes. That will be an assist for sure. It represents 50% of the case load of the PRTB and unless we come up with an easier, seamless mechanism for dealing with these issues, the rest of the Bill will definitely not be able to implement the objectives. We may consider looking at some amendments on the voluntary housing issue for the reasons I stated. I am not fully comfortable with that because de facto it will move the cost onto the shoulders of tenants who cannot deal with it, but I am glad that we are beginning to discuss these issues in more detail. It needs to be supplemented by a broader discussion on direct provision of social housing in the manner in which we did previously. I am not talking about having to go around and build the houses, but about some mechanism by which the State could take them over and run them more efficiently than is being done currently.

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