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

This is a terribly important point. The guidance going back over 30 years was always was simple. The deposit was whatever rent was per month. At a time when rents were £300 per month, I remember well that the guidance was that the deposit was £300. It was not £500 or it was not double the rent. There was never any such thing. That was an old fashioned thing that was always there. Why in the name of goodness should students be targeted for an extra deposit? At the end of the day, the deposit should only be used in the case of somebody abandoning a property, leaving a person high and dry or doing damage. In many cases if damage is done the deposit is immaterial because it will always cost a lot more than the deposit would be anyway.

It does not make sense. It has to be mentioned in the context of this because it is terribly important not to let this go. There was an awful situation when students got caught during Covid-19. They had paid their deposit. Through no fault of their own they had to go home. At the time it was one of the biggest issues going. My personal interaction with it was that the private and smaller property owners gave back the deposits to the students. Among what I would call the larger and institutionalised property owners, there was a blanket refusal to give back the deposits. I thought that was horrendous, because the students had not done anything wrong. They did not stay at home from college because they did not want to go to college. They could not go to college because college was closed. Those people, their parents and perhaps in many cases their grandparents lost their deposits at a time when families were so upset and financially challenged anyway. I thought that that was inherently wrong.

This is sound. It should always be that a deposit is a month’s rent. That is what it should be and there should not be variants from that. Unless something is happening out there that I do not know about, it should not be happening. Going back over the last 30 years, that is the way it was.

See this speech in context