Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will also be supporting the Bill, which I welcome, on Second Stage. It is opportune because, as the Minister stated, the Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Act 2016, which contained provisions for minimum notice periods, the creation of rent pressure zones, the capping of increases within those zones to 4% and the limitation of rent reviews to every two years, was introduced in December 2016. The Government and, in particular, the previous Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, said there would be a review of its workings but that has not yet been seen by Members. He said the Commission on Taxation would feed into the budgetary process regarding incentives and initiatives to retain landlords and encourage more landlords into the marketplace but that has not been seen by Members either.

There have also been commitments over a long period of time to provide for an adequate inspection regime. However, considering that there are only approximately 65 such workers across the country for 325,000 rental properties, the failure to deliver on that commitment is also disappointing. Any such measures or incentives that would retain landlords in the sector and encourage more into it would yield a return which is needed in the short term because of the terrible vista and crisis with which we are faced. In the absence of that having been done, I support the Bill as proposed and, no more than any other Member, will allow it to pass Second Stage and move on to Committee Stage. I hope the Government will get its act together in the meantime and be in a position to bring meaningful amendments to the Bill in order to honour the commitments it made this time last year.

My party and I realise the need for immediate initiatives and interjections in the marketplace because the current cost of rent, often upwards of €2,000 in cities, cannot be sustained. Nobody in this day and age who wishes to provide for himself or herself and a family should have to pay such exorbitant rates. We have always bought into the theory that nothing will happen overnight. How many years has the current Government been in power? As I said yesterday and many others said today at a conference organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and attended by many Members, supply is the key to affordability and cost is the key to supply.

The Government, despite its commitments in the programme for Government and the confidence and supply agreement to take away barriers to the construction sector such as cost, development charges, certification costs, cost of finance and VAT, has made no attempt to address those issues. In the absence of any such attempts or the provision of affordable or social schemes along the lines that Members expected, we are faced with this dilemma and I, and many like me throughout the country, meet in our constituency offices the poor, unfortunate people faced with the terrible vista of a landlord telling them there are relations home from the United States or Australia who need the house, or the landlord wishes to make substantial changes and alterations to the house and, hey presto, the tenant is out on the street. We have asked on several occasions for a greater definition and qualification of "substantial alterations". That was committed to by the Government but not acted upon.

I hope that the Government, in allowing the Bill through Second Stage, will give a commitment as to when it will be heard on Committee Stage and when the Government will be able to respond to the Bill and live up to the commitments it has made. I have not seen the report of the Commission on Taxation and have no knowledge of what the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, considered in his negotiations on foot of that report. The commitment in that regard was originally given by the previous Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, during his time in office.

Some 70% of landlords own just one rental property and many are involuntary landlords. There have been no initiatives on the waiving of commercial rates for over-the-shop developments where conversion to residential use could be forthcoming. There has been no initiative to assist with the reduction of local property tax measures to help the industry. In his pronouncement yesterday, the Minister referred to affordable rent schemes. For how long have Members been crying out for such a scheme and expected movement in that area? We have yet to see such movement but yesterday there was talk of pilot schemes that may ensue in the coming weeks and months. We should have a blanket scheme across the country in that regard at this stage.

Nothing has been done regarding the revision of the repair and lease scheme that has been an abject failure. I do not think there have been any recent drawdowns from that scheme. Indications of its potential failure were recognised eight, nine or ten months ago but there has been no progress in that regard. There have been many announcements and pronouncements and many considered, small steps but a lack of urgency, initiative and effort to overhaul the system or bring about new thinking and ways and methods. As I have been saying for quite some time, conventional methods have abysmally failed over the past six years but they are being persisted with.

I made a contribution today, as did Deputies Bailey, Boyd Barrett and Ó Broin, among others, to a housing conference. Many experts were in attendance, as has been the case at various housing conferences over the past number of months, and everybody present at the conference shared a frustration that we have not seen the sort of progress that we thought might emanate from the all-party committee that sat in this Oireachtas and fed into the Rebuilding Ireland programme and provided many credible proposals and suggestions that had the support of all parties and none, some of which were taken on board but many of which were not. The Rebuilding Ireland document was acknowledged as a programme that was well undertaken, well meant and well informed, considering the consultation process that took place, but we always said implementation was key. Unfortunately, the figures do not lie and the terrible failures are evident for everybody to see in so far as when affected people come to our constituency offices there is no house building programme to which we can point and say that there has been progress in the relevant county and there will be more progress.

When the Minister this week met with the CEOs of local authorities and county managers he stated that targets will now be put in place. I have no problem with measuring success in respect of those targets when they are published but I would have hoped, as I said to the Minister last week in the Custom House, that we would also measure failures and be honest and frank about them. How many people were on the waiting lists of each local authority on 1 January 2016? How many houses were built by each local authority and how many purchased in that year? How many houses were built by approved housing bodies? How much land had local authorities available during that year? At the end of the year, how many people were on their waiting lists? If that information was available for every local authority for 2016, 2017 and 2018 we would see the wastage in respect of land and the lack of urgency on the part of either the local authorities, the Department or the Minister who is driving them. It is high time we identified where the deficiencies lie.

We have been told on many occasions that the eight-step process in respect of procurement from when a site is identified to when it is built on, which is often three or four years later, has been reduced to four steps.

It has not, however, made any difference to when these sites become viable. I repeat what I have said in this Chamber for the past two years. In my constituency there are two sites in Tullamore and Edenderry where 30 units were to be constructed. They were identified two and a half years ago and there were various announcements and pronouncements about them. There should be 600 or 700 houses built on the two sites if one was to add up all the times that progress was acknowledged on the sites. As is the case throughout the State, unfortunately, not a digger has moved on site since. This is the reality. While all of that is building up and while there has been no progress in this regard, the demand in the rental sector increases and it manifests itself in Bills such as this coming before the House. Some opportunists in the sector take advantage of the situation and take advantage of leniencies in the existing legislation around timescale and then we have the situations we see in our constituency offices throughout the country. People are in terrible states of being. Their mental state is put to the test in their efforts to house their families or to be in a position to have some hope. Deputies are in a terrible predicament - no more than these people - in not being able to offer hope, because we cannot show progress in this Dáil term with the leadership from the Government.

I spoke earlier about incentives and initiatives that could be put in place that could allow for the creation of improvements in tenure for greater periods. Then there would be no problem with a six-month notice because there would be a tenure of perhaps ten years with incentives, initiatives and support from the Government. The market would work itself out, supply issues would be addressed, the rents would come down and people would have choice. When people have choice there is affordability and that is where we want to get to. That is where we hoped we might have got to at this stage but it has not been the case. As I have said before, it is time for all parties and others to be in a position to start conditioning the public to the different alternatives and mechanisms there are and the different way in which things can be done. The Government seems to be hell-bent on travelling the same road that has failed miserably over the last years.

I thank the Deputies for bringing the Bill forward. I appeal to the Minister and the Government to make sure this Bill is brought to Committee Stage as soon as possible. It will offer the Minister and his Government an opportunity to live up to the commitments and the expectations they gave us when they made resolutions on foot of the passing of the previous Residential Tenancies Bill that there would be a review and improvement of that legislation, in addition to the limited success it has had, and that positive initiatives would be brought forward to help and assist the landlord sector to ensure that properties are available for greater tenures for those who need them in the meantime.

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