Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One issue that my office in Limerick is contacted about multiple times a day is housing. People are calling to look for help with their housing issues and help to get on the housing waiting lists, people are in mortgage distress and, more and more, we are seeing people who are struggling to pay their rent. Those in this category are extremely varied and include students struggling to find a house for a semester and families who have rented for years but the rent just keeps going up and up. To put it simply, hard-working families cannot keep pace with rising rents. Rents are out of control. In the second quarter of 2020, the standard average rent in Limerick was €1,027 per month. By the second quarter of 2021, it was €1,122 per month, a 9.3% increase year-on-year, which is not sustainable.

Moreover, there are hardly any properties available. For example, in Limerick today, there are only 12 properties available for rent. Some of the rents are those we would see in the Upper East Side of New York’s Manhattan, not Limerick city. There are only two family homes available for less than €2,000 a month, and one of them is close to €2,000. This is a disaster because there is nothing there for people to rent.

The current Government talks about solving the housing crisis but that is all it is - talk. If the Government was serious about addressing housing concerns, it would have taken decisive action. One would think the budget was a prime opportunity to do so but not for this Government. The Government offered renters nothing in the recent budget, nothing to alleviate even a little of the pressure on renters. If it was an exam, it would have failed.

When there is a crisis that affects so many citizens, an emergency response is needed. The Government needs to take action to stymie the rising rents. One option that would surely be welcome is a refundable tax credit that would give one month’s rent back to renters.

Another aspect of dealing with the housing crisis is ensuring that those who rent do so in abodes of a minimum standard. In the past few weeks, I have been contacted about two properties near the University of Limerick, one of which has a bedroom in the kitchen area and the other a toilet next to the main cooking area. In both cases, the landlords were seeking €600-plus per month for the pleasure of renting the properties. Renters need protection. A useful step would be an NCT-type certification system for properties, under which a certificate would need to be renewed every 12 months.

Another key problem for people who are renting is the tenuous status of their leases. Families are being evicted on the basis that the landlord's children are returning home from Australia - for some reason, it is always Australia - and the tenant is informed that the property will not be available for rent much longer. Section 34 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, as amended, must be amended to remove the provision whereby the use of a rental property by family members is a legitimate reason for eviction.

Housing is a challenge and we must get our approach to it right. The Government missed an opportunity in the budget to ease the pressure on renters.

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