Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy MacSharry and the organisations and individuals who have assisted him in producing this Bill. It is a Bill Sinn Féin is happy to see proceed to Committee Stage. It also gives us an opportunity to raise some related but wider issues in terms of the reform of the regulation and oversight of the buying and selling of houses. I will come to that in a moment. I also want to thank the Minister for her constructive approach in many of the concerns she has raised with the Bill. They are concerns that both myself and my colleague, Deputy Pa Daly, had discussed as valid reasons why this Bill needs to go to Committee. Those matters need to be teased out, because this is an area where there is a huge need for better regulation, but that regulation needs to be got right based on the input of all relevant sectors.

One group of people I would add to the list, which the Minister has just mentioned, are consumers themselves. Too often in this debate it is valuers, estate agents, lawyers or State agencies like Tailte Éireann and their respective bodies that are consulted. We have to ensure that any strengthening of the regulations surrounding the buying and selling of residential homes in particular puts consumers at the heart. Far too often we hear not just stories of sales that fall through, but stories of malpractice. We hope they are at the fringes of the market in terms of artificial bidding and developers withdrawing from contracts. I am sure the Minister has been closely watching Rathmolyon in County Meath, which has created significant issues for people who paid deposits on new homes more than a year ago. As I am sure the House knows, the most recent development there has been the appointment of a receiver. Very hard-working people who paid deposits and signed contracts in good faith are now in an even more precarious position than they were prior to the appointment of the receiver. Depending on the approach of the receiver and the extent of the debt owed by that developer to primary creditors the possibility of losing deposits, in addition to losing the prospect of their homes, looms very large.

I advise Deputy MacSharry that in addition to the issues raised by the Minister, I also think some of the legal definitions in the Bill need to be carefully thought out. The most obvious one is to define matters such as sale agreed more clearly in law. That is valuable but also one that needs to be thought through. I think therefore that committee scrutiny is absolutely essential. In that context, my colleague Deputy Pa Daly, who is unable to be here, will engage in a positive way with that pre-legislative scrutiny. He would like to see the committee progress it as appropriately as possible in its timeframe.

While the Minister is here I will raise some broader issues about the regulation of this area, which is directly related to this Bill. Her Department is under very real pressures with the important work she is doing in terms of combatting domestic and gender based violence and other issues around law and policing reform. It will therefore always be a challenge for the fundamental reform of property services regulation, for example, strengthening the Property Services Regulatory Authority, and as she has mentioned the Multi-Unit Developments Act. That was always going to be challenging. Her Department has a huge number of priorities. This is no criticism of the Minister or her officials. However, those key areas of regulation are lower down the priorities for a variety of good reasons. In the last Oireachtas a number of us wanted the housing committee to spend some time looking at those matters, because housing, its regulation, the delivery, buying and selling of houses including the matters under consideration in this Bill are matters higher up the priority list of our committee. However, we are precluded from doing so because this rests with the Minister. She will know that when the Tailte Éireann legislation was going through the House, the Oireachtas joint committee which dealt with it made a number of recommendations to the Minister. One was that the Property Services Regulatory Authority should be transferred into that new entity and come under the auspices of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage rather than the Department of Justice for the same reasons.

I am firmly of the view that if the Oireachtas committee is to consider this Bill, it would be useful for it to consider some of those wider matters, either by way of consideration of amendments to this legislation or just to consider them. Often we see stories of people putting bids on houses and then being told there are other bidders. They are not sure if they are real bidders or if there is a phantom auction going on. The price goes up and, ultimately, they pay more or are unable to continue to compete. The process lacks transparency or meaningful consumer protection. That has to be looked at.

Likewise, there are issues, and Rathmolyon is a good case in point, where people pay deposits and sign contracts but the other side of the transaction fails to sign and then comes back saying that before they will sign additional money has to be paid or the contract will fall through. Such practices are clearly not within the spirit of the existing regulations but are occurring and need regulation.

When I first engaged with the Property Services Regulatory Authority, I thought it would be a body to which, for example, if somebody had a genuine complaint, they could go to make a formal complaint against a property services management company, an estate agent, a valuer or an owners' management company and action could be taken. However, it is a voluntary code of conduct which the authority has virtually no powers to enforce. That stretches well beyond the issue before us but engages with the issue of owner management companies, including those that remain in the control of the developer and are not yet transferred to the owners, as well as property management agents etc.

There is a broader issue of reform and the reforms before us could be part of a wider review. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and our committee have a role to pay in that. The Minister will find that members of our committee see that as something more immediate which we would like to address. If it was something into which the Department was minded to put time and energy, many of us on this side of the House would be keen to work on a cross-party, cross-Government-Opposition basis. Ultimately, Deputy MacSharry and the IPAV, which assisted him in developing the Bill, want to ensure the process of buying and selling a home is more open and transparent and carries less risk for all players, that if and when people break the rules, there is somewhere to go to complain and enforce them, and that consumers have protection.

I welcome the Bill and the Minister’s response to it. My colleague, Deputy Daly, looks forward to its passage to Committee Stage.

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