Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing forward the Bill and the generosity of spirit in which he has set out its context. This week, there already has been much discussion and debate on the upcoming end of the moratorium on evictions. This is a welcome opportunity to focus on a related issue, namely, the quality of accommodation available to those in the private rental market in Ireland.

Ensuring that a stock of high quality accommodation is available for those who live in the private rented sector is something to which we are absolutely committed. We have clearly set out this commitment in Housing for All and we have backed it up with actions and funding over the past number of years. I will come back to that later in my contribution.

The Government will not be opposing the Bill on Second Stage. The core objective of the Bill is after all the same as our own, which is the common goal of ensuring that those who rent have access to the highest possible standard of rental homes. The Bill is also very much in line with the general policy direction the Government is already taking in this area and one we are in the process of pursuing as part of the current comprehensive review of the private rental market being undertaken by our Department right now. The review aims to put in place a private rental sector which gives long-term certainty to tenants while ensuring that property providers, both small and large scale, are encouraged to provide badly needed rental property for all those who depend on it. This was set out in the Government's counter motion on the debate held earlier this week.

It would be remiss of me not to point out some of the potentially serious downsides in the Bill as it is currently drafted. These are drawbacks which I would readily accept have quite possibly not occurred to the Deputies on the other side, but nevertheless their consequences could and would be very significant to the rental market itself. Again, I welcome Deputy Ó Broin's comments in trying to home in on the imperfections. Before I do that, I would like to take a few moments to reflect on the current state of the private rental inspection regime. Is the current system working perfectly? It is certainly not, is far from it and I acknowledge the points made by Deputy Ó Broin. We no doubt will hear this evening that a high percentage of homes fail their inspections. This leads often to the erroneous conclusion that the general quality of accommodation for rent is very poor. This is in my view far from the reality on the ground. The raw statistic of high failure rates needs to be put into its proper context. Local authorities proactively target those properties most likely to be of a poor standard.Theirs is quite rightly a risk-based approach. To take these properties then as representative of the sector as a whole is not completely accurate. Furthermore, the majority of properties fail inspections for a mix of minor and major non-compliance issues, many of which are relatively easy or cheap to remedy. Rental standards are exacting, and rightly so, but it would be wrong to confuse all non-compliances with homes unfit for human habitation and it is far from that.

Excellent progress has been made over the past 12 to 18 months on the number of inspections conducted by local authorities. This reached a record high of almost 50,000 inspections in the past year - some 20% above their pre-Covid-19 levels. This reflects significant concerted and focused effort by my Department in close partnership with the local government sector. The current regulatory regime will be formally reviewed as part of the wider rental review. However, elements of the system are already under examination. For example, I am happy to report work is ongoing on delivering on the Housing for All commitment to develop a roadmap to implement minimum building energy rating, BER, standards for the private rental sector, with the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, currently undertaking detailed research in partnership with my Department. This policy initiative dovetails well with the Government's Climate Action Plan 2023 and, once in place, will help to ensure a supply of sustainable, energy-efficient homes is available to Irish renters. This will mirror the significant progress we are already making in the local authority housing sector through our national retrofit programme. We are, as I say, very much witnessing a positive trajectory in the rental inspection landscape. It is evolving at pace. The strategy of carefully thought-out incremental capacity building is one that is already working. In fact, it is the only one that makes sense at present and I will tell the House why.

This brings me back to the shortcomings in this Bill. Good intentions can sometimes lead to unintended consequences. In the case of this Bill, the proposed certification system which is at the heart of it would be highly likely to have a detrimental and disruptive effect on the availability of rental properties at this critical time. Properties would lie empty for weeks as they awaited certification, resulting in upward pressure on rents and an increase in homelessness. For example, based on 2022 Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, data, my Department estimates that some 101,000 rental units could be unavailable to rent for extended periods during the first year of this proposed new regime as they await inspection by local authorities. This is because many of these would likely fail their first inspection and remain uncertified and unavailable to rent for a further period until non-compliance issues are resolved and reinspections scheduled and carried out. This would undoubtedly have a serious adverse effect on the rental market. This would be bad at any time but I think we can all agree that right now is certainly the worst possible time.

The demands that the proposed regime would place on local authorities in the short to medium term would be highly significant. It can sometimes take up to three inspections before a dwelling reaches full compliance. We could therefore be asking councils to carry out an extra 300,000 inspections in the first year of the proposed new regime. In other words, this would be a five-fold to six-fold increase on their performance in 2022, which itself was a record year. Even if this was something we felt needed to be done right away, it is something that we simply cannot do. Virtually all local authorities have reported difficulties in rebuilding rental inspection capacity post lockdown. The sector reports serious difficulties with staff recruitment and retention with qualified candidates for inspection roles commanding higher salaries in the construction sector.

If this proposal for certification is to work and major disruption of the rental market is to be avoided, it will require an extended lead-in period of a number of years in which inspected dwellings could be certified in advance of any legal requirement for certification and prior to being placed on the rental market. Moreover, the knowledge that a dwelling would be without the rental income for a period while certification is awaited would also deter continued investment in the rental accommodation market at a time when there is a need to increase rental supply. We must seek to improve standards while encouraging landlords to stay in the market. The current regime does, for the most part, strike that balance. It should be noted that non-compliance with the existing minimum standards regulations is not grounds for eviction. The tenant remainsin situas the local authority engages with the landlord in a collaborative way to remedy non-compliance issues. This means that there is minimal impact on supply in the rental market under the existing inspection regime.

I will conclude by again welcoming this Bill and the chance it has given me to talk about the important progress currently being made in the private rental inspection regime. Would the common goal we all share, which is that of a higher quality supply of rental accommodation, be helped by the provisions in this Bill? In general terms the answer to that would have to be "Yes" which is why the Government takes no issue with the good intent behind this Bill at this time. Again, I refer to Deputy Ó Broin's comments in respect of trying to perfect the Bill. However, what matters is results not intentions and that is what we should judge our own success by. On the implementation as it is now and at this time, this Bill would have a potentially enormous adverse effect on Ireland's rental market. For this reason alone, it would need significant amendment to be workable.

While not opposing the Bill, the overall Government position is to continue progress made on increasing inspection performance while allowing a greater examination to take place of the wider private rented sector which the Government has now commenced and have committed to seeing through in the next number of weeks and months.

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