Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

He should ensure that when we walk out the gates tonight, we do not pass three or four people in distress on the streets. That is the Minister's job but it is one he has not been doing. Clearly, there will always be homeless citizens and families while Fine Gael remains in power. We are now entering the ninth year of this miserable austerity Government. The fundamental reason is the Government's active encouragement and protection of a ruthless landlord class. From recent freedom of information responses and other information which has come to hand, we know of the relentless meetings between the former Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, who was chief operations officer of the austerity programme, and foreign so-called property investors, namely the vulture funds.

I commend Deputy Ó Broin and Sinn Féin warmly tonight. The Deputy is trying to at long last move the scales back towards a much fairer housing market. The Bill is intended to complement a suite of other measures to prevent family homelessness. It is also an amending Bill for which that excellent front-line organisation, Focus Ireland, has called for a number of years and a restatement, of course, of Sinn Féin's 2016 Bill, which the coalition partners, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, defeated. Though short, the Bill is important. It seeks to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 to prevent tenants in buy-to-let properties being evicted when a property is being sold. It seeks to insert a new section 34A to restrict the termination of tenancies in buy-to-let dwellings. It applies specifically to investment mortgages. The definition of "investment mortgage" is designed to ensure accidental landlords are not included in the restriction which will apply only when a mortgage is taken out on a residential property which was not intended to serve as the person's principal private residence.

I agree completely with Deputy Ó Broin that while the Bill may be short, it includes an important measure to move back to a housing market that serves young people, families and citizens who are desperately seeking housing. Threshold, Focus Ireland and other front-line organisations have provided definitive evidence to show that a majority of those entering family homelessness come from the private rental sector on foot of notices to quit to provide vacant possession. That has been my experience and I am sure it has been the experience of the Ceann Comhairle. So many of the families and individuals I have represented over the past number of years have had that experience. They then go on to be left for two and a half or even three years in hotel rooms, bed and breakfast accommodation or guest houses.

On 14 February 2019, I brought forward a motion on homelessness, which was co-signed by my colleagues in the Independents 4 Change technical group. We tried to urge the Minister to declare a housing emergency and embark on a widespread, State-led housing programme to increase supply dramatically. Based on his own figures, we know the Minister will not achieve the Rebuilding Ireland targets and will be long gone from government when we are still striving to meet them. We also sought a commitment to rehouse families who had been in emergency housing accommodation, including hubs, for 18 months and more. I note from replies to questions my colleague, Councillor John Lyons, put to Dublin City Council that families have remained in hubs since the day they were established. In fact, while the voluntary housing bodies gave a commitment that families would only be in hubs for three or four months, some have now been there for 12 and 15 months. In the earlier emergency accommodation, we found people going way over two and a half years. The Minister is right about one thing. It is very distressing, in particular for the families and children in this situation tonight as we reach this deplorable milestone.

The Simon Communities have been producing the locked-out-of-the-market report regularly to update us on how few properties are available at certain points in time to those in receipt of housing assistance such as HAP or rent supplement. The Government may have spent €700 million - it is heading for €1 billion on HAP - but when we meet people week in and week out who are homeless or going to one house and another to stay with relatives or friends, they just cannot access HAP. Certainly, we still have that situation in the Dublin region. The Minister mentioned property companies and foreign companies but Deputy Boyd Barrett also referred this morning to the Irish Residential Properties REIT. It has a massive property portfolio, which is bigger than most housing bodies and county councils as it approaches 3,000 units. It awarded its chief executive a basic remuneration package of €680,000 with a further €2 million in future shares. We have had a relentless programme. Yesterday, the Financial Timesreported on what it called the impending buy-to-let boom which it said was a model to transform rental housing into an investable asset class. This form of investment is spreading across Europe as the rental yield in many countries is significantly higher than the bond market can, for the most part, offer. Of course, our own country is often highlighted as a particularly attractive proposition for the companies that want to enter that area.

We need increased supply of good-quality rental accommodation, but it should be linked to affordable and stable rents. On this side of the House, we have come forward again and again with proposals to freeze rents for two or three years to give us a chance to get some programme, even Rebuilding Ireland, up and running properly. The Bill before us is a modest attempt to begin to deal with one of the most awful aspects of Irish rental law. The Minister's defence of the existing situation is based on an untenable fantasy. It is clear from reporting on other EU member states that we could have a different system and a much fairer rental market. However, we will never have that while Fine Gael is in power. The background to this is that many of the ruthless landlords who are continually pushing rents up received all of the tax breaks before the 2014 period. In its latest budget, the Government gave them a 100% tax break. The ideological party in this is Fine Gael and the situation will remain hopeless while it is in power.

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