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

I thank the Minister of State very much for his reply. I know all the reasons he has given for why a tenant would have to leave, but in practice it is very hard to get that through and to get the house back. As I said about the road from Kenmare through Kilgarvan and down to within five miles of Killarney, it is just one road and I believe there are hundreds of houses, even in Killarney itself, that are idle. They are in Marian Terrace, St. Brendan’s Terrace and all those sorts of places in Killarney town and it is just because it is not worth the owners’ while to rent the houses. A fellow went to Australia for a year and said he wanted his house back, but he did not get it back for three years when he came home. Owners should not have to go through that; it is not fair.

We are here to help each other address the housing problem and there are so many different ways. With voids, as far as Kerry County Council is concerned, there is too much of a cost to fit out the houses. There was a house in Kilgarvan I raised lately, I think with the Minister of State, where the council demanded the chimneys be taken down. There was no need in the world for that as there were people in those houses up until a few months ago. They only needed to be painted, done up and whatever was needed. Why were bedsits ruled out in 2015 or 2016? Young people lived in them forever and a day until they were not allowed any more. At that time, people in bedsits just had the room and came out to the top of the stairs or somewhere and they all used the one bathroom. Now there is the facility of having an en suite and all those kinds of things. These people hardly turn on their sides in the bed before they are out of it again. They just want a place to change their clothes and lie down for a couple of hours before they get going again while they are young. We could take a lot of people off the housing lists. There are the kind of things we need to address, especially the voids and the reasons people are not renting out their houses. I ask the Government to please do that. It will have my 100% support to do that.

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