Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Fine Gael legacy in housing has many facets, including rough sleepers, thousands of homeless children, hundreds of thousands of people on waiting lists and a rent and house price bubble. There are also tens of thousands of people in mortgage distress. Another critical element is the exploitation of the most vulnerable tenants. The graphic reality of this exploitation was brought effectively to people's screens last week by "RTÉ Investigates: Nightmare to Let". The lives of thousands of people are being materially threatened by a small number of thug landlords who pack tenants in and stack them high. Picture one example of a woman and newborn baby living in a room without a window on a floor shared by many strangers above a restaurant next door to the office of the Fine Gael Minister of State with responsibility for housing, who is in the Chamber now.

Meath County Council is so inundated with emergency housing that it faces a Hobson's choice. For Meath County Council to enforce standards, it would literally have to put people on the street. There are 6,922 private rented accommodation properties in Meath and only 89 are inspected in a single year. It is the fourth worst rate in the State. Of these, 72% failed to meet standards. At the current rate of inspection, the council will manage to inspect the rented accommodation in Meath in 78 years. If we have learned anything in this House over the past seven years it is that if there is a negligible rate of inspections, there is negligible enforcement and non-compliance, and that is what is happening now with landlords.

It does not have to be this way and I commend Deputy Ó Broin on putting together tonight's Sinn Féin motion which seeks as a matter of urgency a plan for ensuring compliance with minimum standards. We seek proper resourcing of inspections, as these will not happen without such resourcing. We also support an NCT-type certification system for private rented housing. We also seek the putting in place of proper penalties for people who put other human beings' lives at risk. That is what is happening around the country. The penalties must equal the threat to the most vulnerable people in our society.

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