Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I wish to state that the Labour Party will be supporting the Bill on Second Stage. There is one particular issue to which we will propose an amendment on Committee Stage, but I will come to that later. It is clear from the numbers present that the Bill will pass on Second Stage. I too welcome the late conversion of Fianna Fáil. It will mean that the Bill will pass, and that is positive. However, it would have been more effective if that particular view had been expressed at an earlier stage in the life of this Dáil, because we might have been able actually to do something practical.

Quite honestly, we are coming close to the end of this Dáil and the practicalities of getting the legislation all the way through both Houses of the Oireachtas are fairly difficult. Since there is a clear majority in favour, maybe that muscle can be used to move the Bill forward on Committee Stage. Perhaps we can have pre-legislative scrutiny quickly and not have a delay in taking the Bill on Committee Stage. We may be able to get it back to the House for Report Stage and then through the Seanad. Clearly, the Opposition numbers are greater in both Houses than the Government numbers. I am putting that challenge out tonight to be worked on.

As Deputy O'Brien said, there is a raft of Opposition Bills with nothing happening. What is the point really? We constantly debate the issue of housing here in this Chamber, but if we cannot actually do anything about it for the people who are stuck in rented accommodation that they cannot afford, then what is the point? The idea that people would pay in excess of €20,000 per year is absolute madness when we think of what average incomes are and the kind of incomes that people are trying to pay those rents from. We should make a concerted effort actually to achieve something within the lifetime of this Dáil rather than have all these worthy Bills going nowhere. Some of these Bills have come from me or my party as well as other parties. I called this place a do-nothing Dáil once and I see more and more evidence of that.

Many people present will remember when, three years ago, we sat in the Chamber late at night to bring through legislation that the Government considered to be important. There were some positive measures in it. It was the legislation that brought in rent pressure zones. We debated a complicated formula that was actually wrong and we had to put it right. We were here until midnight. There is no reason we cannot do business if we want to. One of the amendments we proposed at the time - it was proposed by other parties too - linked rent increases to the rate of inflation. If that had happened then rather than rent pressure zones, we would not have the kind of increases that we are looking at now. Such increases are putting us in the position of requiring a temporary rent freeze.

I wish to comment on the Berlin proposal. I had a look at it on my telephone. The proposal has not been implemented yet. There are warnings about how it might affect the housing market, but the legislation is not yet in place. There are protests about it and so on. We need to give it a chance to see how it works. The linking of rent increases to the rate of inflation is in place in several countries and is effective. I believe that is the best idea, if we get it in time.

Clearly, we have reached a point where rents are simply unaffordable for people. According to the most recent Daft report, in my city of Limerick the average rent is €1,219. I meet people all the time - we all do in our work as public representatives - who simply cannot afford the kind of rents they are being asked for. Before I came to Dublin yesterday, I met a group of elderly people in a retirement village. They are now being faced with rent increases that are simply impossible for them. They went into the retirement village believing that they were going into secure accommodation with rents that would not go up beyond a certain point, but they are now faced with significant rent increases.

Clearly, we need supply. No one disagrees with that. I want to comment briefly on that as well because we have seen affordable rental proposals being made while little is happening. I know there are intentions for several areas in the Dublin area in particular. Sites have been identified as suitable in my constituency and in other cities but we have seen no progress. We have not seen affordable purchase moving in a speedy fashion either.

The vacant sites levy is meant to encourage the provision of land for the development of housing, but there is no great evidence that that land has being forthcoming either. Increasingly, the private sector is choosing to build on the public land that has been made available to it, something we debated on many occasions should not be the case.

I submitted a proposed Bill, which has not yet come back from the Ceann Comhairle's office, on something that my party included in a previous Private Members' Bill, namely, implementation of the Kenny report of the early 1970s. This would discourage people who own land that is appropriate for development from sitting on it and hoarding it until they can make a significant profit. This would be done by limiting the amount of profit to the current value plus 25%. I hope I will be able to introduce that Bill in the House in the near future. That brings me back to the point of us in opposition making proposals that do not move any further and are left, and us not being effective.

I support this Bill in principle. I would like to see a concerted effort to get it through. My party's concern, on which I would propose an amendment, relates to when the Bill is near implementation, and that is that people outside of rent pressure zones should be protected from their landlords increasing their rent significantly in anticipation of a freeze. That is always a fear with legislation and we would need to have measures to prevent that from happening. There may well be other proposals amending the legislation.

In principle, the concept is one that my party supports and is one we have proposed as well. We should move this on to Committee Stage but then we should move it further. Otherwise, we will have a new Dáil coming in with a pile of wonderful suggestions and Private Members' Bills that have not been enacted. We will have not been able to do anything significant to protect those who are stuck in private rented accommodation, cannot afford a mortgage, and are outside of the social housing income limits. Even if they are within those limits, they are probably still on waiting lists anyway. We need to do something to protect the people who are renting in Ireland.

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