Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Not only that but there is an important effect for the sheer humanity of having appropriate living standards. The Deputy is quite right to raise it.

Under section 34 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, any person who contravenes the regulations I discussed in my previous contribution, fails to comply with an improvement notice or re-lets a house on the private side will be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding €5,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months. If it is repeated or continued, the person would be guilty of a further offence on every day on which the contravention, failure to comply or re-letting continues and for each such offence would be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding €400 per day.

A fantastic piece of work was done by the Library and Research Service on mould and minimum standards throughout the EU, the different legal obligations that apply in different countries and identifying the proportions of social housing stock. We fit well within that but the issue is making these things happen.

The Deputy outlined a range of legislative measures that may be there for the private rental section but I suggest there is a practical solution to many of these problems. I do not want to lose housing stock in the private rental sector to social housing tenants and I want standards to be improved. There is something around not vilifying landlords, which I am not suggesting the Deputy does, but rather making sure every measure is taken to ensure, in an effective way, we incentivise investment and get the problems fixed. Good landlords will want to do that quickly.

The Deputy correctly highlighted the social housing side. I can provide her with funding figures because we are tight on time. A huge amount of money has gone into bringing back voids and refurbishments. In 2020, the largest ever voids programme was funded by the Department at a cost of €56 million. It allowed 3,607 properties to be refurbished and made available for allocation. There is continuous improvement in the social housing stock, as well as the private rental sector.

It is important that the Deputy has raised this because it is not acceptable for children to be growing up in those circumstances. I too have seen medical reports linking asthma and respiratory illnesses to mould in social housing. It is not acceptable but we have to look at a breadth of solutions to get practical remedies as quickly as possible.

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