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

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk on this very serious matter. I, too, am looking at this from both sides. I really feel for the people who have to give up their tenancy or whatever or when they get notice to quit, mothers with maybe three children, couples and young children. So many times there is a human side to their story. It is sad that we are not improving and have not improved the situation. For the number of years I have been up here now, the situation has not improved. In fact, it is getting way worse. It is sad for the people who have nowhere to go. This eviction ban that the Government is putting in place now until the end of March will do nothing to encourage landlords or householders to stay in the private renting business. It is one of the reasons that they will get out of it and sell their houses or do something else. If we want control, and I believe that someone who buys or pays for a house - first of all I should have declared that my brother is an owner of some houses, I do not know how many, I will not ask him. I have only my own house anyway. It is so tough on people. I know someone who has their house sold for a number of months, and they have notice given to someone to quit for over two years. It is a well-heeled professional man and he will not get out of the house. That is not encouraging other house-owners or landlords to stay in the renting business.

Our homeless centres are not adequate, where couples with children are directed into a homeless centre where there are other people with addiction, noise and everything and small quarters. I say to the Minister of State and I really mean it that the Government had no problem in the world in directing and finding a hotel in the Park Road in Killarney for 193 asylum seekers, and it is putting more of them into Ballybunion.

I am asking the Government to find proper rental accommodation for our own people who become homeless and to look after them in the same way it looks after the hundreds of thousands who come here from other countries. We have enough of them at this time and we need to cap that story and give it up until the Government is able to look after them. It is not doing that and it is leaving our own behind.

There are 171 vacant houses in Kerry. I am directly blaming the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, for this because he is demanding that those houses be deep retrofitted, which will cost €60,000 or €70,000 in each case. However, the Department is giving only €11,000 towards that. If homeowners got a grant in the past six years, they will not get a euro or a penny to bring their houses back into use. Heretofore, the council was able to rely on the tenant purchase scheme to bring voids back into use but that scheme is no longer working. The ban on Airbnb letting and other short-term letting is not going to help people to rent long term.

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