Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have to say that this is one of the most depressing debates I have attended in this House during this term or my previous term. On the one hand, the Government says everything is fine and lists a load of measures. I accept that all of those measures have been taken and everything is not fine. They are not effective enough. Clearly a lot more needs to be done. We have a housing crisis. People were annoyed when the President pointed out the blindingly obvious. I suppose the emperor always gets annoyed when somebody points out he is naked. We do not have enough houses.

It is not just the fault of this Government. It is the fault of governments going back to 2000 and before that when a decision was made that the State did not need to develop houses. It is not necessarily the fault of this Government that there are not enough houses but it will be the fault of this Government if the next Government faces a housing crisis, which it will unless we start developing houses now.

On the other hand, from the legislation tonight, it appears Sinn Féin has one solution and one solution only, which is to stop private landlords serving notices to quit, even in circumstances where they want to move back into a house, even after letting their house out for a particular period because, under the Residential Tenancies Act, it is unlawful to have time-limited tenancies, and even where they are moving abroad or to another part of the country and wish to let out their houses while they are away, which is beneficial to society because we need to encourage people to let out houses rather than leave them empty. The effect of an ongoing eviction ban, as it is called, which is emotive, or an inability to serve notice of termination for such landlords will be that they will not let out their houses.

Instead of tinkering around the edges of the Residential Tenancies Act, which is what the Sinn Féin Bill does, we need fundamental reform of the Act. We need to acknowledge that this Act was brought in at a time when most landlords were Irish-resident and, while they may have owned numerous houses, were individuals. Now we have huge corporate entities moving in and buying whole developments.

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