Dáil debates

Tuesday, 28 July 2020

Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020: Second Stage

 

12:35 pm

Photo of Richard O'DonoghueRichard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and look forward to working with him in the future. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have looked to Departments to show leadership and guidance to the public but they have not done so. Clear and concise instructions need to be given and some parts of this Bill require clarification. For example, tenants who have taken pay cuts across the board to keep their jobs and help keep our economy afloat face continued reductions in their salaries. For some tenants, this has led to increased financial worries about rental payments and arrears. This is a position in which many tenants find themselves. The economy is not stable enough, at this point, to decide on what the new normal will be. Tenants and landlords are in limbo and pinpointing a selective group in this Bill will not help flatten the curve of the rental situation we are facing.

Everyone I have spoken to since being elected to Dáil Éireann talks about rural Ireland, because they see that rural Ireland has been forgotten. We once thought there was only one border in Ireland, but now people say there are two. They say that once one passes Naas one has gone over the border. This has to stop. I come from a construction background and have been in that sector all my life. Before that, all my family came from the farming sector. From being on the ground, I can see where the housing pitfalls in our society lie. I served on Limerick City and County Council for six years and I tried to use my construction background and experience working with communities to highlight those pitfalls. We have more voids in County Limerick than we have new houses. Only 121 social houses were built in 2019. The town of Askeaton has been waiting for a sewerage system for 30 years and they can no longer build there. Oola is at capacity and they can no longer build there either. Last week, I was in the town of Hospital, where 20 new houses are to be built, with a community group. The capacity of the sewerage system is 15 houses, so they had to implement an on-site sewerage system to make it viable for a contractor to build the other five houses. The capacity was not there.

If we want to help the rental sector and have people living in rural areas, the biggest problem is infrastructure. I have been saying that since I came into this House, and said it when I was on the council as well. We need investment, we need to incentivise, and we need infrastructure. There is no infrastructure in rural Ireland. That is the bottom line. There is nothing in any town or village one goes to. They have not been invested in and are at capacity. If someone wants to build a one-off house in rural Ireland, he or she has to pay massive fees to the county council. Those fees include footpaths, water and road infrastructure. There is none of that in rural Ireland, yet rural Ireland is being charged for it.

There is also a massive number of voids in County Limerick, as well as across the country. If the Government parties want to help, they should ask someone who has been involved in this sector all his life and I would tell them that planning restrictions are an issue. Many buildings are being held up because of conservation. We have iconic buildings that need to be protected, but townhouses are also being held up because the authorities want to protect the structures. We can fix this with a small bit of common sense, by working with people and taking away all the bureaucratic bull that comes with planning.

We need to get people into our towns and villages and into housing stock, but our county councils do not have the workforce to do that. The failures of the previous Government have caused many of the problems we face today. When the crash came in 2008, the then Government shoved everyone into education. It focused on education, education, education. It sent everyone to school and it forgot about the trades. All the FÁS courses and everything else closed down and everyone was shoved into education. Education does not build houses. We need trades. We are now ten years behind on trades and we are trying to do these rapid builds. We do not have enough people in the trades because they were stopped for years. We need to incentivise them. A law came in which made contractors liable for apprenticeships while their apprentices were in college. Small contractors in rural Ireland were being punished because they had to pay people while they were in college when they used to be paid by the State. Similarly, student nurses are not being paid while they are in college and they should be. Apprentices are only paid by the State if they have been in receipt of a social welfare payment for 12 months prior.

Young people who want a trade are being forced to go on the live register when they leave school at the age of 18 in order that they will be covered while they are in college learning a trade. That does not make sense.

The whole system is wrong. We can fix the rental system by being constructive. We can help all landlords and tenants if we are constructive. Households of two people who were working and had their wages reduced are now in financial difficulty. They would be better off if they were not working because they would qualify for everything. People working in this country are the worst off because they qualify for nothing. Those with incomes marginally above the thresholds do not qualify for a medical card or the housing assistance payment, HAP, and go from pillar to post trying to pay bills.

The majority of the people leaving the country during this pandemic are not working, yet they can take a foreign holiday. The people who are working can hardly pay their rent and are falling into arrears because they are working. This has to change. Certain landlords are bad and certain tenants are equally bad, but we also have some excellent landlords and tenants who are working with one another. Some landlords are renting out a house that was left to them and on which they have a mortgage to pay. When the tenant cannot pay the rent and falls into arrears, the house is at risk of being taken by the vulture funds and the banks.

We need to step in, reward good tenants and landlords and put measures in place to protect them. There is nothing to protect the people trying their best. Restrictions are needed for the bad landlords and tenants. Checks can be done to see how good people are in their properties and how well they respect their properties. We need a workforce in the councils who will rebuild the voids. We can fast-track this process because every void in a town or village is connected to a sewer line and recorded in the database on capacity for that sewer line. Let us bypass the bureaucratic bull and accept that conservation rules need to be relaxed for certain properties. While we should keep the front facade, roof structure and streetscape, we should allow the modernisation of the rest of the building so we can move people in. These idle voids are already registered on the ESB, sewer and water systems and included in the data.

We cannot build in rural Ireland because there is no infrastructure. There are no sewerage plants and no investment. We hear talk about building houses but that will not work, apart from in cities. People in rural Ireland are sick and tired of paying large fees to councils for footpaths and roads that never materialise. We are being punished again. We are made to pay double and triple for everything we do in rural Ireland, whether that is for a septic tank or percolation test. The housing system is being made harder and harder for people in rural Ireland who are being made to pay three and four times more than people living in the cities.

We need investment in rural towns and villages and our infrastructure. The Minister can do this and I believe he will listen. The little bit we learn after the bit we know is the bit that counts, and nobody knows everything. I am willing to give every bit of advice I can to the Minister on infrastructure. I am willing to help him in whatever way I can so we can get people housed in Limerick and get others back into our villages. Village can be self-contained and can provide a system for rebuilding our communities in rural Ireland. I look forward to the Minister helping us and I will give him whatever help I can.

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