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

To put it simply, this is a tax break for landlords. This is a long and detailed amendment. If it is being included to strong-arm landlords somehow or coax them to make it more beneficial to rent to people in receipt of rent supplement, I do not think it will have that effect. Surely it would have been far better to stamp out the practice, common with landlords, of refusing to take on tenants who are on rent supplement. They are doing so for a number of reasons. One is that in some areas they can get a higher rent from tenants who are not in receipt of rent supplement. That is because the rent supplement caps are so low. The amount set by the Department of Social Protection that one is allowed to rent for does not bear any resemblance to the price in the local rental housing market.

The other reason is that many landlords are not registered with the PRTB. That is the problem and therefore they will not take tenants or prospective tenants who are in receipt of State support for their rent. That is the bigger issue because I think this will miss the target. It is a bit like the rent control proposal. The latest report on the rental market from daft.ie shows that prices jumped by 3.2% in the last three-month period that is available to us. That is the biggest jump since 2007 and one could say it was in anticipation of the proposals that came two weeks ago.

Has the proposed measure been costed? If so, how much will it cost the Exchequer? Would it not have been better to channel what it will cost the Exchequer, whatever figure that may be, into the social housing budget for the construction of local authority houses? I know the Government inherited an economy that was in bad shape, but there have been only 1,270 local authority house completions since 2011. One must compare that with the 1992 to 1996 period, when a Government of which the Minister was a member was in power, when 10,600 such houses were built. In the five years from 1997 to 2002, 15,900 were completed. In the 2003 to 2007 period, there were 21,000 social house completions. The figure over the past four years has been very small. Surely that is where the problem is in the housing market. I do not like referring to the housing market, however, because we are talking about people's homes.

If we are trying to do something about housing, it should be noted that the shortfall is in the supply of social housing. If there were more social housing, there would not be as many people in receipt of rent supplement trying to rent from private landlords. In addition, the amendment misses the target. We should be looking at legislation to try to stop the practice of landlords refusing to accept tenants in receipt of rental subsidies for the reasons I have outlined. That is what we should be doing.

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