Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will do my best to set some kind of a good example, however I will be tempted from time to time, as the Ceann Comhairle himself would be, to occasionally refer to previous contributions. I do not claim to be an expert on the issue, and I am trying to address the amendments in the grouping. I declare a lack of interest. I am not a landlord, in case anybody got the wrong impression, nor do I have any aspirations to be. Like the Ceann Comhairle and many people in the House, over many years I have studied the housing situation, its tos and fros, its peaks and valleys, and tried to work out some means of ensuring we did not have a feast or a famine, which is what we have lived with for many years.

Interestingly enough, Deputy Dessie Ellis, with whom I do not agree ideologically, has an understanding of the way these matters work, as does Deputy Connolly. However, they should not allow an ideological bias to get in the way. One can go into a lending institution any time one likes and tell the lender that one is ideologically inclined in a particular direction, as a result of which one demands attention. Unfortunately, it does not work that way in the cold, hard reality of life. Deputy McGuinness made a number of interesting observations and he obviously understands from local authority dealings the scene that has been presented to us. This is about rent and rent control, rent massaging or holding rents at an affordable level. It is difficult to do because once the market is interfered with at all, a problem is created somewhere else down the track.

There are two groups of people in need of attention in this country at present. One group consists of those, to whom reference has been made, who do not qualify for a loan from a lending institution, a loan from their local authority or a local authority house. These are not necessarily the lowest income earners in the country. They have reasonable enough incomes. However, they do not qualify for any of these measures and they still will not qualify for them if the Bill is passed. The reason they do not qualify is that we used to have a system to deal with this situation many years ago, which was abolished and replaced with a different system that did not work. Some of us spoke about it at the time. About 15, 16 or 17 years ago, there was a switch-over in what the local authorities did regarding rental accommodation being provided by the State or what are called approved housing bodies, which were a disaster. People laugh when I mention this, as the Ceann Comhairle knows, but the fact of the matter is that they were a disaster. The longer we pursue this notion, the more pronounced the problem will become in the years to come, so let us deal with two or three of the issues if we can.

There are no circumstances to my mind in which the ownership of property is a lesser aspiration than renting. I have heard various people, obviously with vested interests, promoting countless times over recent years the notion that it is much better, safer and cheaper to rent. It was so at the depths of the crash but it has not been since, nor will it ever be again. I will put it this way. How can one explain to people that they would be better off renting their houses and that we will control the rents for them when it is known that the person who invests in the residential property must borrow the money for a start and must make a profit on the borrowed money as well? Unless the landlord is a fool altogether, he or she will not let housing without making a profit. This increases the rent that must be paid on the property, and it will be this way forever.

I will give the House an anecdote. I was involved in a few schemes to build voluntary or affordable houses. We decided arbitrarily that the maximum repayment should be somewhere in the region of €800 per month. This was in the middle of the boom. Suggesting this to people at the time was very difficult, but we did, it was successful and it continues to be successful to this day, despite the fact we had to compete against the approved housing bodies which were able to acquire the land for €1 per site. We had to pay €20,000 for the same sites right beside them, which was the most peculiar situation there ever was. I offer this anecdote by way of explanation as to how we might try to influence the matter in a positive way for people.

In our local authority area, there are about 8,500 applicants for local authority houses. These are families, not individuals. More and more people are becoming homeless for a host of different reasons. Banks are putting pressure on the buy-to-rent sector, which is forcing people out onto the street or into an alternative, namely, rental accommodation, which another bank is in turn forcing out into the open, resulting in homelessness. There were always homeless people in this city, as we all know. In the peak of the boom, there were homeless people for a variety of reasons. Society should not be this way, but that is the way it is. We all in our various areas had to pick them up and try to dust them down, as it were, and bring them to some kind of safety. It did not always work, but we did our best. The point is that now these people's situations are in competition. They are competing with people who have been forced into the market by virtue of circumstances rather than through some fault of their own.

I believe that house property is way too expensive in this country at present. I will give the House an example. When Bill Clinton retired a few years ago - Deputies may ask how relevant this is; I will tell them - he bought a property in upstate New York for $5 million or thereabouts. To buy the same property here at that time would have cost $25 million. I rest my case. It is not possible to operate in such a market, so we must find a means to ensure a sector of the population that cannot compete in the marketplace is provided for alternatively. This is where Deputy McGuinness is correct. We need to build more local authority houses, we need to build them quickly and we need to introduce modular houses where this is not already happening. We need to do this as a matter of urgency because every day that passes - two or three years ago, it was every month - the situation becomes more severe for the people concerned.

I would love to have an opportunity to discuss many more aspects of this issue. The Minister has said we will have an opportunity for statements. Let us hope we do because Government backbenchers have very little opportunity to make statements in these debates at all. That is the way things have gone, and it is a problem, but I hope we do get an opportunity to speak on the fundamentals of this issue in the hope that we can do something about it.

I believe the Bill is an attempt to focus on the situation and deal with it. I am not certain it will resolve the problem. It will not provide a single extra house; it cannot. However, it will provide focus on the issue. I could not finish without saying that I know plenty of landlords who have been very diligent and conscientious towards their tenants, have not raised rents at all over a long number of years - or if they have, by very little - and treat their tenants as if they were their own family. Unfortunately, there are other landlords as well for whom it is a question of how often and how high the rent can be increased to such an extent that, in some cases, rents have gone in the past 18 months or thereabouts from €800 or €900 to €1,900 or €2,000, which is a fairly dramatic increase. People ask why this is happening. It is happening because no houses were built, either local authority or private, for a number of years. That is the problem. Where is the population coming from? It is a cycle. Every new generation comes on stream and is entitled to receive a fair evaluation of their case regarding housing. Unfortunately, we have seen over recent years that the local authorities or Governments do not seem to have been prepared for this cycle. It comes up on us. All of a sudden we wake up one morning and we have a housing crisis. However, it is not the first one.

In the 1980s, when there was no money and absolutely nothing in the country, when we were in the middle of a recession, a depression - at least everyone thought we were - our local authority in County Kildare was able to build between 300 and 400 houses per year and offer local authority loans of another 400 per year. That is almost 1,000 each year. In the intervening period, nothing has happened at all. The result is that these people are all backing up on the waiting list. As a result, we are in the situation we are in now.

I would like to compliment the local authority in one respect. As a result of the promptings of several public representatives of all parties, the local authority has purchased houses in recent years. We had hoped they would be allocated before now. We hope they will be allocated fairly soon. The local authority was fortunate enough to be able to acquire houses and properties when they were available. I hope that will continue because if it does not, we will not be able to solve this problem in the short term unless the modular houses come in in truckloads and people buy them.

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