Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I endorse everything Deputy Canney has just said. All across the country, including in many of our provincial towns, the rapidly increasing price of property is the direct result of the lack of availability of property and serviced land.

I want to take a step back and focus on the low-hanging fruit. While there is no doubt that we have a huge challenge in servicing land, opening it up for development and building new houses, we also have a substantial number of derelict buildings across the country. This is housing stock that could be put back onto the market relatively quickly and we cannot continue to ignore it. I am like a broken record, consistently raising this issue in the House and there are a number of aspects to it. I have been highlighting that for a serviced site being developed in Dublin, the State is paying an average of €30,714 but is not providing any assistance to refurbish derelict buildings in our towns and villages. I hope we will see that rectified in an announcement by the Minister next month but we need to go further on this.

Another issue that I have been highlighting consistently is that of older people in housing that is totally unsuited to their needs. Many are in two or three-storey houses which are too large to heat and they would love to move to smaller accommodation but there are two challenges in that regard. The first is the lack of availability of such accommodation and the second is the lack of security of tenure if they do move into such accommodation. There is a lack of one-bedroom and two-bedroom bungalows in the private housing market for older people to either purchase or rent. The only such accommodation is generally local authority housing and any older person with an existing property is not eligible for it. We need to take a proactive step, working in partnership with the private sector, to develop one-bedroom and two-bedroom bungalows in cluster-type settings close to town centres so that older people have the option to downsize.

In many cases, accommodation will be leased to older people. In that context, we need to introduce special legislation to provide security of tenure. I have raised this issue at the Cabinet table previously. We must provide security of tenure to older people. We have seen tax incentives provided in some retirement villages associated with nursing homes across the country to encourage older people to downsize while allowing them to continue to live independently beside amenities that meet their needs.

I draw attention to a case that I brought to the attention of the Minister's predecessor. Mary sold her home and moved to an unfurnished apartment in one of the aforementioned retirement villages back in 2011. There was an issue regarding ownership and the rent was not index-linked. Suddenly Mary was faced with an increase in her rent of 86%, from €430 to €800 per month. People on fixed incomes cannot be faced with such situations. If we are going to encourage older people to downsize, we must address this issue. I have raised this with the Minister directly but nothing is being done about it. We can pay lip service to the concept of downsizing but older people need security. Such security is not being provided to them in law at the moment and that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.

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