Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support the Sinn Féin motion.

I thank "Prime Time" because it was the essence of public service broadcasting. RTÉ is a public service broadcaster and its programme has allowed this agenda to move forward in a way that, perhaps, if it was only us politicians talking, might not have happened. Being on the national airwaves has been hugely helpful in this regard.

As I said, my party fully supports the Sinn Féin motion and thanks the party for bringing it forward. I had originally thought about putting down an amendment until I read the email sent to all Members of the Dáil by former Senator Aideen Hayden, the chairperson of Threshold, in which she asked us all to reach consensus. She wrote:

We are calling on all parties to unite in defence of vulnerable tenants living in modern day tenements, often at the mercy of rogue landlords. We want to see a genuine commitment to real and effective change and that our NCT proposals are enshrined in legislation.

Former Senator Hayden then goes on to ask for consensus.

If I had proposed an amendment, it would have been only to slightly strengthen the motion. I would have amended the first section, which calls on "the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government to set out, as a matter of urgency, a plan for ensuring compliance with minimum standards regulations in the private rental sector". I would have added, "including the immediate commencement of an investigation into the activities of underground unregistered landlords". I am sure that can be incorporated in the intent of the motion anyway.

I do not know the intention of the others who have tabled amendments. I welcome the fact that the Minister has said the Government is not opposing this and that Fianna Fáil has said it is supporting the Sinn Féin motion. Everybody in this House should unite on this issue and, as Threshold has said, it should not be a political football.

We need an immediate inspection regime led by the Minister. The reason I wanted to put in the extra bit is that I believe the regime specifically needs to find those rogue underground unregistered so-called landlords who are exploiting the desperation of those who are looking for a home which we saw clearly in the "Prime Time" programme. One of my first reactions to the "Prime Time" programme, apart from being horrified at the conditions tenants were living in, was that there was criminal activity. I was looking at what I saw as criminal activity where tenants could not get out if there was a fire. There were literally dozens of tenants on corridors, a fire door locked in one situation and no proper access to getting out. I suspect that is criminal endangerment but, obviously, that would involve a legal case. Certainly, that is what I felt I saw on that programme, and that is extremely serious. Others mentioned Grenfell Tower. We must ensure that there is not that type of fire danger for anybody.

I have an intern who is from South America. She is not from Brazil but from another South American country. When I told her today what I was coming in to speak about tonight, she said it was easy to find those sites on Facebook. She printed off some advertisements for me today, that is, after the programme was aired. I can give them to the Minister later. These are mainly in Portuguese but my intern speaks some Portuguese and she explained it to me. One, for example, is in Dublin 12. It is a house being shared with 24 other persons - Brazilians. I have a couple of photographs of mattresses on the floor and bunk beds right beside them being advertised at €200 a month for one particular vacancy. In at least three of these cases, there are addresses. There is an address on the Old Cabra Road. There is an address in Ash Street. There is an address in Charles Street. It does not give the numbers but it gives the streets, and it says roughly where they are in Dublin. These are currently on websites. It should not be too difficult to find a lot more of these. I would hope that this debate tonight will precipitate the finding of many more of these accommodations that are being advertised to very vulnerable persons, who cannot afford accommodation and who accept these on the basis that they are affordable, but clearly they are entirely unacceptable.

There is real urgency about this. This is not something that was only occurring in those particular premises that we saw in the programme. We need something much more proactive. I accept the good work of the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, does in many situations but I am not sure that it is the right body to do this, and I note that others have said that. For example, there should be local authority staff whose job is to be proactive and go out and find such premises. As Threshold suggested, a certificate should be obligatory and the penalty should be "severe" so that there is no incentive for being outside the system, and "Inspections would then focus solely on whether the landlord held a certificate of compliance". We need that kind of immediate and strong action in relation to those who operate outside the law. I accept that we need a system whereby registered landlords are inspected but, more urgently, we need to get to those underground black market landlords who are not registering and who are advertising in places, such as Facebook.

The Peter McVerry Trust proposed, for example, in relation to empty properties, that local authorities should have empty homes officers whose role would be to proactively go out and identify empty homes and find a way in which at least some of them can be brought into use for people to be housed. We need that type of proactive action on this as well. We do not need to wait until somebody reports or finds out that these kind of practices are going on. We need somebody to go out and find where they are. Local authorities have access to a lot of information on who is living where and they should be able to find it, if they had the wherewithal in terms of resources but also the power and the functional role of going out and doing this. As a public representative, I do not want to be standing up in here after some place has gone on fire, there have been whatever number of tenants living in the premises and it has not been registered, examined or discovered. We cannot merely wait for a long drawn-out process of identifying where this is going on. It is urgent.

There are many other issues in relation to housing that we have discussed here practically every week in the past several months, and I am sure we will do so again, but this is one situation where we all need to unite for a single action that is being required. I refer to this NCT-type system, but also to the need to ensure that there are strong deterrents to ensure that landlords do not operate outside of the system and that we have a safe regime for those in rented accommodation. Whatever their financial circumstances, they should not be exploited because they cannot afford more expensive properties and there should be no tolerance of substandard, and particularly dangerous, accommodation.

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