Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am very concerned about amendment No. 21 because in it the Minister is effectively turning landlords into enforcers and the landlord will be responsible for ensuring this money is paid. This would include local authorities and voluntary housing associations, because it applies to the owner of the house. In the case of a local authority, the owner is the local council and in the case of a voluntary housing association the owner would be Respond, Clúid or S.T.E.E.R or a similar organisation.

My greatest concern is for the tens of thousands of people on a low income who are renting privately. About this time last year, around the time the Minister took up his position, we addressed the issue of the position of the Private Residential Tenancies Board in both the committee and this House. The PRTB was a positive step forward because it put something in place where we had nothing, but it only had a staff of 31 or 32. This made it very difficult to take a case through, hard to get the PRTB to take on the case and difficult to get it completed. This is no fault of the staff there. There are two main problems. First, the existing legislation is extremely weak in regard to tenants' rights, although there are also difficulties for landlords and, second is the lack of resources available to the PRTB.

Sinn Féin is concerned that we already have people who are becoming homeless. A typical situation is that a landlord wants to raise the rent, perhaps from €500 a month to €600 or €700 a month, but he cannot raise the rent for the sitting tenant within 12 months of the previous increase. What happens therefore is that the landlord serves notice on the tenant and the tenant has to move out. If there is any hangover of a utility bill, that is deducted from the deposit. I have frequently come across a situation, and this is what gives rise to my concern regarding this amendment, where the landlord will withhold some or all of the deposit for damage. That might be justified sometimes, but much of the time it is not and the deposit is being retained for wear and tear. The landlord will retain the deposit and use it to redecorate. The problem in this regard is that the tenant has no way to raise another deposit for new accommodation.

I having been dealing with the case of a girl named Edel. She is stuck in private rented accommodation, but she cannot get a tenancy agreement or rent book from her landlord. She is a very vulnerable person and the best I can come up with for her to show the local authority she is renting the place is to get her to keep the lodgment receipt from the bank showing she is lodging money in the landlord's account. She should be on the housing waiting list and I will try to get her onto the local authority list in the next few weeks. This girl has serious disabilities and a traumatic past. I would not even try to describe a quarter of what she has gone through. What she has been put through is horrendous. She is from the Minister's county originally.

This woman is not on the waiting list and is unable, therefore, to get rent allowance. She is living on €86 a week and her electricity was cut off the other day. I raise this matter in the context of this amendment. The electricity account was in the name of the previous tenant and because Edel cannot show she is now the tenant, she cannot get the account transferred to her name. I have not been able to do that either. She has no electricity, no rent allowance and has just €86 a week left after lodging €100 a week to the bank for her rent. She is living on fast food and some of her neighbours are helping her. This is a difficult and appalling position to be in.

If this amendment goes through, it will cause another problem for her and many like her. The media often mentions how common renting is throughout Europe, from housing trusts and other groups. That is fine and dandy for them, because there is nothing unusual for people in Germany or Holland to be in the same private rented apartment or house for most of their lifetime. However, it is a different story here. It is like a mill churning, how quickly rental properties are turned over here. Several tenants could occupy the same house over the period of a year here for various reasons.

If, for example, Irish Water charges by the quarter, in the first quarter some tenant might leave the house on 1 March without having paid for the first quarter. The landlord will not want to pay that bill. Therefore, we will have a situation where, for example, Joe Bloggs leaves the house without paying and then Mary Bloggs comes in as the next tenant at the start of the second quarter. She will end up carrying the bill for the first quarter, because that is what is happening in the case of electricity. That is what this amendment will allow. The landlord will not take on the shortfall. If Mary Bloggs does not pay, when she goes to leave the apartment or when, six or 12 months down the line, the landlord decides to raise the rent and she cannot pay the new rent, she will be caught in situation where part of her deposit will be withheld to pay the charge to Irish Water. This is a serious problem.

I see the Minister shaking his head, but I can see no other way for this to work. The fact is the different pay periods for the bills will not always correlate with the length of people's tenancies. This is only one of the problems and I can think of ten more. Will the Minister provide an answer in his response regarding the case of the girl I mentioned who has to produce her receipt from the bank into which she pays her rent? I am aware this is a separate issue, but I would like to hear the Minister's response to it. She is very vulnerable and should be on the housing waiting list.

If a water bill is carried on to the new tenancy, the new tenant will feel hard done by and may not be able to afford to pay it. The people most affected by this will be the people on low wages who are not on rent allowance or people on rent allowance who may be on social welfare. Those worst affected will be people like the unfortunate person I have mentioned who is on social welfare but is not on rent allowance because of a technicality or because the landlord will not comply.

She cannot rent anywhere else. The Bill presents a new set of problems for her, in addition to her existing problems. If the changes are introduced they will lead to major conflict, pressures and tensions and add to the problems that exist already between some landlords and tenants.

Tenants in this country do not have fixity of tenure. The Land League sought a fair rent, fixity of tenure and the right to buy. Land was the issue 130 or 140 years ago but we are still talking about the same issue in connection with housing. People do not have any guarantee when it comes to tenure and there is no sign of it coming in the near future. There was talk last year of beefing up the Private Residential Tenancies Board, PRTB, and perhaps doubling the staff to 60 because the private rented sector has expanded and it is now a major player in terms of housing provision. People have different views on that. My view is that we are overly reliant on the private rented sector. A new problem has landed on the doorstep. The measure under discussion will especially cause problems for multi-unit complexes, but it will also cause problems in the case of single housing units within developments, in particular for people on low income.

We had a debate in recent days about one-parent families. I know many such families. The Government has hit those lone parents who are working part time, who cannot get 19 hours work per week. If they get 19 hours then they can resort to family income supplement, FIS, payment to support them. Many lone parents are in private rented accommodation and they will be affected by the measures contained in the Bill. The situation will be very difficult for them.

Housing issues comprise the majority of cases in constituency clinics and they are also the most difficult ones that arise. That is the case in my neck of the woods anyway.

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