Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

As I have a load of amendments in this grouping, relating particularly to Seanad amendments Nos. 47 and 48, it will take me some time to deal with them. Our starting point has to be that housing in Ireland has been in crisis for the best part of 15 years. When the Government came to power it had an opportunity to begin to untangle some of that and deal with it but the opportunity was wasted. It was the perfect time for ripping up things and starting again but we had the continued crisis in social housing, with a complete collapse in any development in that regard. There was failure to seize on the idea of a well regulated rental sector and, I would say, minimal efforts to deal with the mortgage crisis. We have a rush job on the eve of a general election. There is talk about regulating rent but what we have before us is piecemeal. It is a bit of a stunt and could, in some ways, make the situation worse. It is a lost opportunity.

The reality is that the Government has bent to the real estate investment trusts, REITs, and the big vulture funds that have come in and begun to dominate the rental market. It has been exaggerated and aggravated by the role of NAMA in selling whole swathes of property below cost price to some of the serial renters who have operated as a cartel in this and other cities around the country in driving up rents. The measures before us are insufficient for dealing with this crisis.

I will deal with my linked amendments as they appear and hope I am getting this set-up right because it is very confusing. My first amendment relates to Seanad amendment No. 47 and deals with the definition of market rent. I am seeking to insert a new provision that defines market rent as the average price per square metre of property with equivalent fittings and finish in the same municipal district or local electoral area, as applicable. It provides that the average price per square metre shall be calculated using the data gathered and published in accordance with section 151(b)(c), as amended by section 37 of the Residential Tenancies Act. The theory behind this is that section 19 of the Residential Tenancies Act, the principal Act, sets out that in setting the rent for a property, a landlord cannot charge more than the market rent but this definition is very loosely defined. It refers to dwellings being of a similar size, type and character to the dwelling and situated in a comparable area.

My problem is that size should be the dominant definer of what dictates a market rent. If one looks at daft.ieor similar websites, one will not see the size in square feet or metres of any rental property advertised. Nobody collects data on this in respect of the price of rental properties in Ireland. Nobody is under any obligation to state the size of a property hef or she is letting out. Instead, the number of bedrooms acts as a proxy for size. However, in Ireland, a two-bedroom apartment can be anything from 40 to 100 sq. m. A two-bedroom unit can be a one-bedroom unit with a plywood partition across the bedroom because there is no real regulation of this and no enforcement of standards. One of the girls in my office came across an advertised two-bedroom property in the past few days in which the second bedroom was so small the chest of drawers was nailed to the wall above the single bed because there was nowhere else for it to go. There has been no enforcement of standards in this regard, which is not good enough. We are saying that this is market rent to which we are pegging prices but it is a charade and a nonsense. The definition I am putting forward is far better in that regard because it would enable us to regulate renting in a serious way, set prices and gather the information in that regard. In Germany landlords can charge 11% more if they add a certain amount of insulation to a building or add other benefits that improve the property. Using the price per square metre for comparable properties, as has been put forward in the first amendment in this grouping, is the only fair way to come up with a figure for market rent and would assist us in collecting the data that are necessary in order to drive standards up.

I also believe this approach would tighten things up. What is a municipal district? The Act refers to a comparable area. What is that? Is Sandymount comparable to Clontarf? How do we know what we are talking about? If the Minister of State is serious about regulation and if we are going to make it fairer, we need more data. Amendment No. 2 to the Seanad amendment would do this in a far better way.

Amendment No. 3-----

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