Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill, commend Deputy Wallace for bringing it forward and confirm my support for it. As a very young clerical officer in South Tipperary Council County Council in 1973, 45 years ago, I remember the publication of this report. There was widespread support for it and for its implementation. Unfortunately the Government of the day and Governments since bent to landowners and now we have the housing crisis that we all see around us.

The differential rent scheme now being operated by local authorities, particularly the scheme being reviewed and operated by Tipperary County Council, is based on section 58 of the Housing Act 1966, which was amended by section 31 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009. That section made the making of differential rent scheme a reserved function of the members of a local authority. That was never implemented despite promises made by the then Minister of State, Deputy Penrose, in 2011 and by the current Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, in January of this year. Now senior management in councils throughout the country are using the non-implementation of the section to impose savage increases in local authority rent. That has happened very recently in Tipperary County Council where I estimate the increase in rents will come to in excess of €2 million. The increases are unacceptable. Significant numbers of tenants are subject to increases of anything between 30% and 100%. That is being done by way of changing the method of treating joint incomes of spouses or partners and subsidiary earners, and also carers who save the State millions of euro a year. They are being assessed on their half rate or full rate carer's allowance and lose one fifth of that income which is outrageous. The same is happening to those in receipt of family income supplement who are on low pay. I want the Minister of State to instruct Tipperary County Council to defer these increases and I want the Minister to commence section 31 of the 2009 Act which allowed local authority members, as a reserved function, to have a say in this scheme. This is an outrageous situation and one that the Minister should deal with immediately.

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