Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I look forward with great interest to Deputy Cowen's rent certainty legislation. Unlike him, I believe that if legislation is worth supporting, even if I would like to see some technical changes, I will vote for it if it is the right thing to do, irrespective of how it makes me look politically.

On some of the other changes to the Residential Tenancies Act, including the termination of tenancy on sale, I shall use this opportunity to make an appeal to the Minister of State, Deputy English. There is a Bill that will pass through this House next week, irrespective of what many of us think about many of its provisions. In that Bill, the Minister of State will have an opportunity to do something very similar to what Deputy Jan O'Sullivan is doing here, that is, to provide protection to a significant number of tenants in rented properties at risk of becoming homeless. As the legislation stands, it will provide protection in only 5% of landlord cases. I understand that the Minister is seeking to try to drag this percentage back to where it was originally, perhaps 1% to 1.5%. The vast majority of people who need the protection will not get it. The Government has indicated that it will not support the proposal in front of us today, but I believe it is a proposal that could be amended very simply on Committee Stage next week. I urge the Minister of State to do so.

Let us consider the vacant site levy. Dublin InQuirerrecently published figures that the State should have published a long time ago, namely, a public record of all the vacant land in the city of Dublin. It publishes the addresses and, where possible, it identifies the owners. There are significant tracts of land just lying there. They are not tracts that developers hard hit by the recession do not have the finance to develop; they are just lying idle. Until such time as there is a penalty attached to land left unused, nothing will change.

I wish to conclude by making a general point in response to the Minister, Deputy Coveney. During all the debates we have had on these issues, we keep hearing about balance and the need to balance the rights of developers with the public interest, and the rights of landlords with the rights of tenants. That would be acceptable if we were starting from a position of equilibrium and if there was balance in the development and private rental sectors. I hear people say we cannot intervene too much in the market, particularly the rental market, but there are currently almost 80,000 properties in the rental market that are subsidised by the State. This represents a massive level of intervention.

Under Rebuilding Ireland, the Government is seeking to push that number, which covers rent supplement, RAS and HAP, to somewhere in the region of 140,000. More than one third of all rental tenancies would be subsidised by the State, which is a colossal level of State intervention in the price of private rental properties.

When it comes to defending tenants' rights, particularly at a time when the yields for investors in the rental sector are not only at historic highs in Ireland, but across the EU, to focus on balance misses the point. The balance is so skewed the other way that a modest Bill like this, which I fully support, would only begin to tip it back in the right direction.

When we refer to balance, what we mean is that the Government is scared, nervous or ideologically opposed to making the kinds of State-led intervention, be it in the use of land, the regulation of the private rental sector or the overall frame of housing policy. Until that changes, we will see no substantial change in people's lives.

There has recently been a series of votes in the Chamber on housing policy. How the Chamber divided has been interesting. On the one hand, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are arguing for the same kinds of policy framework that have failed for decades to deliver for people in acute housing need. The rest of us, including Deputy Jan O'Sullivan with her Bill, are urging the Government to break with the failed policy of the past and do something different. It is disappointing that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are opposing the Bill, although I am not surprised in the slightest. Until that situation changes, the people whom we are all seeking to help will not be shown the light at the end of the tunnel that they need.

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