Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am a bit perplexed about this legislation. I tried to grapple with it. My staff in the office, especially Kathy, my daughter, Councillor Máirín McGrath, and all the girls who are there are dealing with terrible situations on a daily basis. They are just flocking in with nowhere to go,with letters giving notice to quit, you name it. Successive Governments have failed to grapple with this. Regulation is never the best way. For a business with an employer and employees, they are better off if they can have good will and a two-way street. About 86% of landlords are ordinary small landlords. The vast majority of them are decent people. They are not in it for a quick buck or for gain. Some of them inherited a house or bought a house as a kind of pension plan. They do their best. Then we have the tiny minority of terrible bad tenants as well. There would need to be room. We had one of them in my own county recently, in my own town of Clonmel, and the house was nearly demolished on a daily basis. It took two years. I could not understand how any human beings would do such damage to a house. They came in and sat in front of me after being through the courts and after being evicted. They were in the hostel and thankfully they have been rehoused now. They need to be rehabilitated. If people are not able to mind a house and look after it, or do not want to, and damage it and dig up the cables, the oil pipes and God knows what, and try to blame the landlord - it was a horrible case. There are many cases like that. Eventually, the court and all found in favour so they had to be. This was turned into a head of steam by people, groups trying to have a protest at this family being evicted. However, we must understand the situations landlords find themselves in. They are not business people, many of them, they are ordinary decent people, no fuss. As Deputy Conway-Walsh said, they have good relationships with their tenants and do not want to put up the rent. Properties are being damaged and other things like that.

The Minister of State announced Croí Cónaithe at the ploughing championships. He was out ploughing, and he would better off if he had stayed ploughing. Ministers love announcing these schemes. They have no consultation with the county councils - none, zilch. Now there is a grand scheme going to create so many places. So many people were delighted because they have buildings they want to upgrade and do up that may be semi-derelict and so on. They were waiting a long time for it but now they are waiting since the ploughing championships, well over a month ago. The Government is great at announcing these schemes. There is no follow-up or follow-through, no knock-on down to the county councils. Then there are voids that are out there and not being brought back.

We are talking about tenancies. I am perplexed, as I said, as to whether this legislation is a good or a bad thing. I would prefer that there could be amicable relations between the tenant and the renter. I hate calling them landlords because they are not, they are accidental landlords or they acquired the property, as I said earlier. We need to be understanding here. The blunt force of legislation - this is going to come to a crescendo again in a couple of months' time. What are we going to do? Is it going to go on and be extended for another three months? There lies the real problem. We need to be encouraging and have more educational programmes for landlords and tenants. We need to have more understanding. It would be an awful thing to be evicted but if people go through a court process and everything is found against them, the renter has to have rights as well. There has to be respect for his property. It is a two-way street.

I agree also that some students are exploited, with different foreign-language people coming in here. What kind of a sense is that going to give them of us as a nation of a thousand welcomes, céad míle fáilte go hÉireann? There are bad messages going back. There is a lot of obair stairiúil to be done here. The Government just does not seem to be grappling with it. Announcing schemes one after the other in succession and not dealing with it is not the answer.

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