Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Notwithstanding the general economic recovery that is under way and that, thankfully is getting stronger every day, I accept that as a country we have a legacy issue in relation to housing arising, as Deputy Michael McGrath well knows, from the collapse in the building industry. Leaving that aside, I note the following on rent supplement which I am not sure people like the Deputy particularly understand. Through rent supplement, we provide housing and homes for 65,000 individuals and families. It is one of the largest suppliers of rental accommodation in the country. What we do and have been doing for some time is to negotiate rents on an individual basis with landlords. The 65,000 homes in question constitute approximately 30% of the entire rental market in the State and our concern as a major player in the private rented market is about what will happen if we simply follow the demands of some landlords who, I have to say, are excessively greedy. The Deputy referred to it himself and let us not put a tooth in it. They are excessively greedy and they are looking for more and more money every couple of months to a scale that is not particularly justified on economic grounds. We can understand that they may be looking to recover losses from the crash, but what we are exploring as a Government currently is the provision of rent certainty. In other European countries where the rental model works quite well, rents are stable over a three-year period or longer in relation to the tenancy agreement.

Coming back to rent supplement, I will give the Deputy the figures to the end of September. We have negotiated new rental agreements which have generally involved significant increases in rents on a case-by-case basis. Working with the family or individual concerned, we have negotiated almost 2,700 agreements through the new, improved community welfare service that the Department of Social Protection offers since we took over the service from the HSE a couple of years ago. The Deputy will know that we work on a protocol with Threshold and a number of other agencies, including Simon on a smaller scale, and have actually negotiated over 1,200 agreements on that basis.

That means that we have negotiated this year. Of the 65,000 people and families in rental accommodation, many of their landlords do not regularly raise rents, but there is a cohort of landlords who do and often ask tenants to leave houses, frequently because a returning emigrant child is going to use the family property. That is fine and valid.

I just want the Deputy to be sure. I want to send out the message to people on rent supplement - we text over 40,000 such customers on a monthly basis, but I want all Deputies to hear this and pass the message on to people who attend their clinics with difficulties - that, if they contact the community welfare service, not only can we negotiate rent successfully, but we will, as the statistics show. This should assist families. The one-to-one contact is also a way of reaching out for more detailed assistance in a variety of other areas, for instance, helping individuals or families into education, training and employment. It is a different kind of in-depth service.

In June 2012, we raised rents across the board by an average of €12,000. Two months later, landlords were back looking for another 10% to 20%. What I want-----

See this speech in context