Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have made the decision that in the rent pressure zones there will be a limit on increases to a maximum of 4%, one third of the rates in the daft.iereport today. The report reflects the situation before we published the rental strategy. Our intervention in these areas will help. I understand the Deputy wants us to move further backwards, but that is not something we are in a position to do. We have a rental strategy agreed to by all of the Cabinet which we believe has the balance right between trying to have predictability in rents in some key pressure zones and adding pressure zones where the evidence is available and encouraging more investment in the sector. If we cut off investment, we will have a bigger problem.

I recall the Deputy speaking in 2012 and fully compliment him ae flagged this issue, but I state repeatedly that the resources were not available. I wish they had been available in 2012 and 2013 to be spent on social housing but they were not. It became a real issue in 2014 and 2015 when we could see rents increasing. In areas in Dublin they have doubled from €700 to €1,400 in the past two or three years. They were not at these levels in 2012 or 2013, but they were in 2014 and 2015. I am saying the Deputy was right, but we did not have the resources we needed available. Now we have money to tackle the problem and have a plan in place to spend it . I have no doubt that it will make an impact. We cannot fix the problem overnight in the way the Deputy wants us to do so. He has a magic pen with which he could go and do it, but it does not work that way for us. We must crank the system back up, intervene where we can and put in place resources to activate sites and have State-owned land put back into use. The Deputy is correct on initiatives to bring vacant properties back into use.

On the motion mentioned by the Deputy, we have the site levy to be introduced in 2019. We have received advice from the Attorney General that we cannot intervene before then. In the meantime we will use carrots to try to get people to bring properties back into use. If the county manager wants to attempt to do this, so be it. I am not sure whether he would legally be able to do so. I understand what is behind the motion, but we are trying to use the carrot approach. We are asking people who have accommodation not in use to talk to and work with us through the various arms of the State. We can lease long-term or give them money upfront to bring the accommodation back into use. If people own land, we will work with them to service it to have it brought back into use. We will try all of these measures. We will get a better response in adopting that approach for now.

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