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

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this very important Bill. Any discussion that can be had in this Dáil to try to help the situation and highlight the need to build more houses is welcome. It is a supply and demand issue at the end of the day. There is one thing we must be very careful about. I have heard people this evening, well-intentioned people, as good as ridiculing those involved in the private supply of housing and making out that they are wrong and somehow doing something out of the way. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are providing accommodation, something I have been doing since a young age. Some of the people involved in this pay tax at over 50%. That is fine, well and good, but it is not good for these people when they hear people maligning them as though they are doing something out of the way.

It would be ideal if the State could deal with the local authority housing lists and if it could build enough houses to cater for the list. I deal with people looking for housing every day of the week at my clinics and on the phone. I am trying to get the local authority to have social housing in as many ways as possible, be it for our young, middle-aged or older people. For instance, the county I represent has a crisis in one-bedroom accommodation. There are people who might qualify for accommodation of only one or two bedrooms. I asked the Taoiseach and was grateful for a reply that if our local authority could come up with housing solutions to cater for that need, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage would look favourably at supporting it. I welcome that; that is what we want.

In this very sound Bill, Sinn Féin wants to encourage our local authorities to provide as much housing as possible. Not to criticise this Government, as it goes back to every government going back as long as I can remember and before that, but they were not able to do that. There is a need for the private market. If you attack and undermine the private market too much, and I have seen this, those involved will sell what were houses rented to people as homes, so those houses are gone off the market and there is less availability of housing which further increases the cost of rent. I know that in no way does Sinn Féin want to do that, but we must be careful we are not the cause of something like that inadvertently.

I have seen the Residential Tenancies Board analysis that some renters in the Dublin area have experienced rent increases of between 20% and 30% over the past four years despite the introduction of the rent pressure zone legislation, which was good legislation. That can mean some renters are paying between €4,000 and €6,000 more a year than they were in 2016. That is wrong and unsustainable. People cannot afford that. At the same time we must be balanced in our approach to this. We all want to have a solution. We want rents to be affordable but we do not want to be the cause of knocking housing opportunities that are there now out of the market and compounding the problem.

I want to see more local authority housing being built in County Kerry. I know young families who desperately want to get the security of their own home at an affordable rate, but unfortunately the practice when I was young where a local authority bought a piece of land, built a scheme of houses and let the young people into it and built single rural cottages is all gone. It is very seldom you would see our local authority building a scheme of new houses in a greenfield site and letting young and middle-aged couples move into them. We have to see more of that.

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