Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill, of which I am generally supportive. I have two queries and would welcome it if the Minister of State addressed them. They relate to changes being made to section 6(b) and (e) of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009. I cannot find an explanation of the intended consequences and would welcome it if the Minister of State addressed them.

Rents are one aspect of the problem. Very few of us are staying with the Bill, but the area of housing dominates much of our work as public representatives because there is such a crisis which manifests itself in a range of ways. A review of the housing waiting list is taking place, but there are 97,000 individuals or families on the waiting list, a considerable number of whom are in receipt of rent assistance. There are poverty traps in the system. If people find a job, it is often difficult to see how the provisions sit with the job activation measures run by another Department.

The housing waiting list problem is not the same throughout the country. I had put figures together in parliamentary questions. A total of 43% of all housing applicants are located in six areas: Dublin city, south Dublin, Cork city, Cork county, Kildare and Fingal. The six areas with the lowest percentage are Leitrim, Roscommon, Longford, Laois, Cavan and Sligo which account for a figure of 3%. Therefore, the picture is not the same nationally and there may be different responses in some parts of the country. There are about 7,000 individuals or families on the waiting list in my county and there is a real difficulty with the rent cap limits. The position in south Dublin has been mentioned. The rent caps in Kildare are €200 lower on a pro-rata basis. When one looks at major companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel and the National University of Ireland, Maynooth where a considerable amount of student accommodation is required, these rent caps almost seem like an attempt to cleanse the area of people receiving rent assistance. I have seen families who have lived in the area all of their lives and have an attachment to it having to take their children out of school and move further away. Taking their names off the list and moving to the counties mentioned where the waiting lists are smaller is not an option because they would have to start from scratch. There is a real problem with moving people away from their families and where they have connections and supports.

Differential rents are designed to ensure there will be a fair ratio between rent and income. I can find very few people in my area who are not topping up. People just call it topping up and do it under the counter. If they tell the Department of Social Protection that they are topping up, they will be told to move. They are ending up in the MABS and not paying their ESB bill and possibly not putting food on the table. It has become a major problem, one I have raised with the Minister for Social Protection for the past year. It must be addressed.

In respect of the RAS, it takes more than six months for housing to become available in the system. I find it incredible that one receives a lot more in Kildare if one enters the RAS than one would in receipt of rent assistance. I spoke to a man recently who had leased his apartment for 15 years under the RAS. In the 15 years he will be paid the equivalent of what the apartment is worth by the State and will still own the apartment at the end of it. It is crazy; one cannot rationalise it. I understand why it is happening - bailing out the banks and paying the bondholders have reduced our ability to tackle debt levels and that there is a Government debt level ratio that must be maintained, but there are false economics and I would be surprised if the Minister of State disagreed with me. Landlords do not want to engage with the RAS because it takes too long. The only way I see houses under the RAS coming into the system is if landlords match a tenant to whom they would like to rent their house. I also note that nearly all of the time of staff in the council is taken up in maintaining existing RAS houses and that getting additional houses into the system is time-consuming. The fact that staff numbers in local authorities are being cut also presents a difficulty. Local authorities are hesitant in taking on obligations when there may be a change in the system. There is an urgent need for certainty.

The shared ownership scheme will become a problem because people will not be able to buy out the other portion of their shared ownership loan. Some of these are 50-year loans and very often people took them out in their late thirties. They will have reached retirement age before the second part of the equity is supposed to be bought out, but nobody will give a mortgage to somone where the house is worth less than when it was bought. That is a problem with differential rents coming down the tracks. There will be a serious problem not too far into the future.

A tiny number of mortgage-to-rent properties are coming into the system, but a bigger take-up would place a demand on the Revenue budget. The number of repossessions will increase. Therefore, a policy to deal with repossessions must be devised.

Like Deputy Robert Dowds, I asked auctioneers in my area why they were not taking RAS houses. In the main, they complained about the bureaucracy involved. They do not wish to deal with rent assistance tenants because it may take months before the application is granted. It is common in the outer reaches of my constituency, rather than in urban areas. I took photographs of the notices in the windows of auctioneers' premises which show that they are screaming for houses to rent. In a strong rental market the people who will do least well are those in receipt of rent assistance and subject to a cap on their assistance payments.

I may have strayed miles from the subject of the Bill, but we need to get to grips urgently with this problem. There are different solutions for different parts of the country. Everyone on a housing list will require some form of accommodation, but there is a real crisis in urban centres and people are paying a very heavy price for the uncertainty when trying to put a roof over their head.

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