Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also thank the Labour Party for bringing this important debate before the House. I wish to record a very specific interest, as I always do, when I have something to declare. I have been involved in the job of providing accommodation since I was 19 years old so I am sort of qualified to talk about the problem in Ireland today. There is nothing wrong with people finding themselves in a position of needing to rent private accommodation. However, renting is not the long-term solution to their housing needs. The right thing would be to have our local authorities provide accommodation, which people would rent and eventually be able to purchase. That is the ideal scenario for a family or a young couple who want it. We are not like other countries where people want to rent throughout their lives. Some people might want to do that, and it might suit them, but the majority want to have their own front door with their own key. That is an ideal that we as politicians, and the current and future Governments, should strive to achieve.

When it come to the issue of providers of what I call the private accommodation sector, our Government and politicians in this Chamber must be very careful about what they are saying when it comes to people who provide that rental accommodation. As has been rightly pointed out by Deputy Danny Healy-Rae already, they are tax collectors, in that every €1,000 they collect, they give more than €500 of that in tax in many cases. They then have to pay the mortgages, the maintenance, the insurance bills and everything else. I deal an awful lot with people who are involved in that sector and they actually find it very hard if they are dealing with a situation where, perhaps, rent is no longer being paid and they are paying a mortgage on a property that they are getting nothing whatsoever for.

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