Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I commend and congratulate Deputy Ó Laoghaire on bringing this legislation before the House. The Deputy has spotted a requirement to sort a gap in the 2004 Act. I remember there was a protracted debate about regulating the security industry through the late 1990s and right up to that period. People understood that there needed to be regulation, proper training and proper identification of everybody involved in the security industry, be they people who provided alarms or safes in houses, or people who worked security standing at doors and who sometimes completely overstepped the bounds. While there is a schedule to the original 2004 Act, people assume there is a comprehensive list. Clearly, as time goes on we learn that it needs to be expanded. This Bill simply adds another category of people to be encompassed by the 2004 Act. It is not a difficult thing for us to do as a Legislature.

I will also make a general point, and it is something we worked on very hard in the previous Dáil. Where the Government did not command a clear majority it allowed people actually to look at gaps in the law and propose legislation. The Oireachtas itself armed Deputies not to be as passive as they had been for a very long time and to be proactive in producing legislation. It has taken a long time for the Government actually to get up to pace with that and to accept legislation from the other side.

I have been around here a long time and I am always wary when people say they are going to set up an interdepartmental working group. In the Westminster annals, of course, that means sayonara and that it is never to appear again. That is not to be ungenerous to interdepartmental working groups as I am sure they are very good. One year on since the announcement by the Minister that they wanted to set up an interdepartmental working group to see whether this category should be included in the auspices of the Act, the Minister tells us today that the main conclusion in the report is that, yes, they should. This is what the Minister had indicated ab initio in the review. We still have not seen the legislation. The Minister has promised legislation next year, which I welcome. I also welcome the fact while there is a majority in the House, it is not the instinctive reaction to vote it down.

It would be a good thing simply to enact the Bill as presented. There is still the notion, and I have a number of pieces of legislation myself, that legislative style is important and so on and there is always a reason it cannot be done, no matter how well crafted a piece of legislation. This is not complicated. It is simply adding a new category to the definition section of an existing Act. If it needs to be superseded when there is another omnibus Bill in the future, then so be it.

On the meat of the Bill, I will not rehearse what has already been well rehearsed by some of the experiences whereby completely unauthorised people who have no identification and who are not known present themselves to intimidate our citizens. That is not acceptable. Sometimes that will lead to a reaction, which is equally unacceptable, where local vigilantes counter that sort of perceived intimidation. We have to stop that. The way to do that is to ensure that people respect the courts, the decisions of the courts and the implementation of the courts' decisions. If a decision of the court is unjust, then the decision must be appealed and the court must be trusted to deal with it. Where a court's decision is made, it must be implemented, but not in any heavy-handed way, not in an unacceptable way, and not in a way that horrifies our own people. I am afraid that in some of the instances that have been so ably elucidated before the House this evening, this is the case.

We need to do this. I suppose it is with the luck of God that we do not have a catalogue of visible cases. There are probably a lot of cases that have not been brought to our notice because they are individuals who do not reach out and they just endure that sort of thing.

The sooner the better we get this legislation enacted in order that there will be no cases and that anyone involved in the enforcement or execution of court orders for repossession will be licensed, identified, regulated and subject to complaint and proper training. It should not be a case of just gathering the lads. That cannot be right. It is not right and we have to stop it.

I want to mention a separate issue, which is security of tenure in any event. We have a long way to go as a society as regards renting. It is probably something instinctive. Deputy Ó Laoghaire stated that there is something visceral in the Irish psyche when it comes to evictions. It is because of our folk memory that we are passionate about security of tenure and having a roof over our heads. People will go without food rather than risk losing their homes. That is the fact of it. However, there is a new reality now. Most people of my generation always wanted to buy their own house but there is a whole generation now that, sometimes because of economic necessity, are required to rent long term or permanently. Some people choose to rent for life, as is the continental norm. They rent from their local authority and although there are generous buy-out schemes available, they choose to stay permanently as tenants. In the private sector, it is the norm across Europe and the United States for people to be in rent-controlled buildings. They have security of tenure, sometimes intergenerational security of tenure, and there is never any fear of eviction or exorbitant or unrealistic rent hikes being imposed on them. We need to get into that space and we need to have that debate.

The majority of landlords are accidental landlords who own one or two properties. They often offload their properties to companies that manage them for them. We need proper long-term security of tenure and long-term leasing possibilities so people can know that as long as they pay their rent, which is regulated and reasonable, they will have a permanent home and a roof over their heads. The maintenance of the home would also be managed properly, effectively and efficiently by landlords. That is the normal relationship that exists across the developed world and it has not embedded itself in sufficient form here. We have all dealt with cases ranging from bad landlords in some instances, who are entirely unreasonable, to bad tenants who do not pay their rent and do not mind the property. I want to be quite clear about that. We need a new settlement on this matter in order that there is a reasonable and fair, but not exorbitant, return for those who invest in private property to rent it, as well as absolute security for long-term living for those who want to lease and rent premises. They should be able to raise their families in those premises if they so choose without any notion that they will be dislodged from their homes, which would in turn dislodge their kids from their schools and so on. All of that is entirely unacceptable. That is a debate for a different Department than the Minster of State's.

Coming back to this specific legislation, I think Deputy Ó Laoghaire's Bill would be resoundingly supported by every Member of this House. Let us get it on the Statute Book. If a Government Bill comes along to subsume it later, so be it. The Bill will give the protection everyone in this House wants to afford to people who might face what I have to describe as the thuggery we have seen in the past. We must protect them from that and ensure people cannot be abused in our State. Where we have seen that happen, we as legislators have a responsibility to respond.

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