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

Through the Chair, if someone is in a family hub for over a year, we will check it out. I have asked whether the family was offered a housing solution and I get the impression they might have been, albeit not the permanent housing solution but perhaps a HAP solution. I have been to a lot of family hubs and I note that a lot of people move through them quite quickly and rightly so. It is not the intention that people will spend a year or two in a family hub. The hope is that they will be in and out in under six months, as happens in the majority, albeit not all, cases. We are trying to address that. The Deputy mentioned a family's case and we will check it out to see where matters stand.

Again I want to get back to this Bill. The residential sector is an essential component of the housing sector. Its vital role needs to be recognised and planned for. The sector has gone through considerable change in the past ten to 15 years. It has doubled in size and provides long-term homes for many more than it used to. Growth in the sector has been driven by a range of factors including a reducing reliance on home ownership as a tenure of choice in some cases. People's employment has changed. Very often they are on different types of contracts which bring them around the country and into different jobs so they are no longer tied to a base for their whole life. Other factors include demographic factors, including inward migration from the EU, decreasing household size, and increasing rates of new household information. Some people are also unable to buy their own houses because of the issues of supply and affordability or because of their chances of raising finance. There is a range of reasons for the growth in the rental sector.

The rental sector in Ireland still needs to develop and mature in order to provide a viable, sustainable, and attractive alternative to home ownership rather than serving as a temporary refuge or staging post on the route to home ownership. Someone backed up the Bill's proposals by saying they happen in other European countries, but some of the European countries used as examples have very mature rental sectors which we envy and would like to have ourselves. We are on a journey to that. We have a rental strategy and we had a rental plan, which was set aside, and it is to be hoped we will get to have a rental sector such as those common in other European countries through these. People will be able to have that choice and rents will be in a proper price range, but that is a journey we are on. Again it cannot happen overnight. It is down to supply.

We want to have a professional rental sector because we do not have one in this country. Some 86% of our landlords are not professional landlords. They are people who have a second home. Some are reluctant, some are not-----

See this speech in context