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

I am answering the Deputy's question and I presume he will raise this information again. He raised it here a couple of years ago. We checked it out. Money was allocated and Limerick did not spend as quickly as it should have done. It eventually did so. I will check again regarding the houses the Deputy has just mentioned. I suspect that these are another round of new houses that have become voids. If they are the same ones that is a different story. I doubt if that is the case. Over 10,000 houses have been brought back into the system over the last couple of years and rightly so, as they should not have been left empty for so long. Thankfully, that is one area that we can agree in which much progress has been made. That does not mean it is perfect but there should be very few long-term voids left in the system now. Every local authority was told in October 2018 to apply for any extra resources they wanted to bring any voids they had back into use. This included Limerick which was written to specifically. The resources were there to fix them. I will take other criticisms, but not that one. If Deputy Quinlivan is saying that there are that many voids, we will check those out again because they may be new ones.

There are a couple of questions on this Bill which I will address. In the first instance, the Minister clearly outlined our position at the outset of this discussion. This Government is all too aware of the challenges posed by the rental market and the impact on renters. We acknowledge and know that the rents are too high for many people. There is no disputing that. The figures are there and recorded.

Our opposition to this Bill is an evidence-based position derived from evaluating the medium and long-term outcomes from a crude intervention such as this. This is not something that we have not researched. We have checked this out and looked at the evidence and we do not agree with it. I accept that Sinn Féin holds this view and has held it for a long number of years, which I do not dispute. Sinn Féin is genuinely bringing the Bill forward in good faith. I do not believe it will have the right outcome that it thinks it will have, but we will differ on that. In fairness, the party is bringing out some very well thought-out policies and proposals which I respect. It is wrong in this, however. There is no evidence to back the party on this. Only time will tell which of us is right on this Bill. There is no evidence to show this, and the evidence that we can see shows the opposite outcome, where it has hit supply. There are issues there that need to be looked at. From purely an evidence-based point of view, we do not agree with this Bill but I respect the view that Sinn Féin holds, which I believe is wrong.

Fianna Fáil's view is a dangerous one to hold where it is flip-flopping around when it comes to rent controls, rent freezes and pressures. We have had it before from its party's previous spokesperson and we have it again now. This is not a good way to develop housing policy. I listened to Deputy Darragh O'Brien earlier but he is not here to take the criticism. I do not believe he is supporting the Bill at all. I am not so sure if Deputy Jan O'Sullivan may have been conned and may not have heard all of the interviews. I am not so sure if Deputy Ó Broin has been conned because he knows well that Fianna Fáil is claiming to support this Bill as it is a populist stance that sounds cool, but I wonder if it will vote for it on Committee Stage next week or the week after that. The chances of Sinn Féin bringing the Bill through Committee Stage in the next couple of weeks are very slim because it is quite clear that this is a holding position by Fianna Fáil. It does not really believe in the Bill, which is possibly a positive in one way. However, Fianna Fáil is claiming to be for the Bill because it sounds good.

I listened to many of the Fianna Fáil contributions and I will concentrate on them for a few minutes. I apologise to Deputy Connolly for so doing because I know she wishes me to go through other issues. I listened for a few hours to Fianna Fáil speakers last week and again tonight. There is a trend emerging that it is the party to be left in charge of housing. We have seen that before and we had that, we know where that got us, and it was not a positive outcome. I listened to Fianna Fáil's spokespersons tonight and they were talking about a generation renting. I have no problem admitting that rents are far too high now. They are not going to be so for a generation. These are temporary. We will deal with them. Already we can see the daft.iereports saying that rents have reached their height and are beginning to come back down which is because of supply. We will keep honing in on that. With all of the changes to the rent pressures zones I have no doubt that we will get those rents back down again. It will not be for a generation. Rents are absolutely too high today. That is different to what Fianna Fáil had, the so-called party of homeownership, which I heard in the speeches again tonight and last week.

People of my generation and others were left with 30 or 40 year mortgages and massive, highly inflated prices. It is not a couple of years of paying rents that are too high, although it is definitely unfair to anybody when rents are too high. They were 100% mortgages for 30 or 40 years for properties that were not worth that price. The mortgages were unsustainable. The Fianna Fáil way is to stick people with mortgages that they should never have had in the first place for their entire lives, not for a couple of years. It is hard to take this talk, that it is for home ownership, from Fianna Fáil week after week and certainly in the past couple of weeks when it was heightened. I am sorry Deputy Casey has to listen to this again tonight because, in fairness, he does not do that, but the rest of his colleagues do it repeatedly.

However, if Fianna Fáil wishes to make that claim, it should check the figures on home ownership before telling me that my party, the Government or other parties are changing home ownership. We have not changed it. To be clear about the statistics on this, home ownership in Ireland peaked at 79.3% in 1991 and has fallen continually since then. In that time the party that was in government most often was Fianna Fáil. In the last couple of years it has been at 67.6%. The biggest drop in home ownership occurred when Fianna Fáil was in government. The statistics are available. In fact, there was the highest number of private rental landlords when Fianna Fáil was in charge in 2006. Home ownership changed during those years, and we should be clear about that. Those who were lucky enough to get a house were unlucky enough to be stuck with a mortgage that was unsustainable. That is Fianna Fáil's record when it comes to housing. Fianna Fáil comes into the House week after week and tries to rewrite the statistics on home ownership. The statistics have been recorded and cannot be rewritten because they are factual. Instead of repeating that mantra, it should check the statistics before coming to the House to debate this matter further.

Some Members asked about going back to Rebuilding Ireland. We did that last week and I am happy to do it again next week, but I will stick with what is in this Bill. We all acknowledge that the number of homeless families is far too high. The number is one of the highest ever, and nobody denies it. However, it is likewise with the social housing building programme. In 2020, the number will be the highest in the last 20 years, through boom times and difficult times. It is the highest social housing output through direct build. This does not include the other houses we will acquire through voids, empty houses, leasing and so forth, which are in addition. The direct social housing build will be the highest next year. I have no problem with analysing the facts but I urge Members to look at this from our side as well. We will listen to them, but it should be vice versawhen we present facts and figures. We are not making them up. They are there and they can be teased and argued about. It is a two-way conversation.

I know the number of homeless families is far too high. Thousands of families left homelessness last year and thousands more will do so next year, and rightly so. We must get people out of emergency accommodation and into permanent housing. I cannot stress that enough. Thankfully, one area in which there is a fair amount of progress is with regard to people who are sleeping rough. Everybody can see that there is major intervention and everybody supports it. It is taxpayers' money through Government supports, NGOs and various agencies. Everybody is pulling their weight and the number of people who are sleeping rough is well down. It is certainly much lower than it was during the so-called boom years. Some progress is being made there. Nobody is denying that a great deal more work is required when it comes to getting homeless families out of emergency accommodation. We must focus on what is happening in the best way we can.

The Bill will possibly only add to the woes of renters by further reducing supply, restricting movement, disproportionately hitting would-be new entrants and driving some tenants into black market situations in which they could be paying rents that are far above those permitted under the RPZs while depriving them of the tenant protection measures and minimum standards that have been enhanced under this Government. I accept that the vital changes that were made and will have an impact were supported by the House. Already the RTB has strengthened its team and is putting more people out in the market and is taking more enforcement cases. It has big plans to take on many cases next year, sending a strong message to the private rental market. That market requires a great deal of intervention and that is why we are doing this. Those measures will strengthen the rent pressure zones and other parts of the rental market.

We will see many developments over the next 12 months in that space. I believe rents will steady. We can see that where the rent pressure zone rules are implemented rents are beginning to steady. There is still more progress to be made and nobody denies that. Berlin is a good example of what happens when one intervenes with rent controls and rent freezes due to rent pressures, even when there is talk about them. Look at what has happened to the supply in Berlin in just a year. Planned activity is down by 40%. That is well before it has happened and is due to just the conversation. That is why Fianna Fáil's conversation is dangerous. I accept Sinn Féin has this view and everybody knows its view.

The Bill also proposes to treat social housing tenancies differently. I am not sure if it is a mistake in the Bill but it would lead to an extraordinary situation where private tenancies were subject to a rent freeze while housing assistance payment rents or RAS rents could be increased without restriction. Given that the earlier RPZs came into force less than three years ago, their replacement with a straight rent freeze is highly likely to damage market sentiment. Potential investors could opt to direct investment elsewhere, not least due to the fear that the State's approach to rent control has become unpredictable. Even during my days in college one knew that investors, be they local investors, funds from abroad or credit union funds, like to have certainty. There is some rent predictability at present, but a rent freeze can deter investment and has been proven to do that. People claim we are too pro-market, but if one interferes in the market too much it affects other investments when it comes to job creation and so forth, not just housing. It is dangerous to overstep the mark. That is our warning in this regard.

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