Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

It is now six months since the Government was established and we have seen very little. We now have a moderate and small-scale proposal on the hikes on the price of rent. The Minister said it is an effort to get a balance between keeping rents down and getting investors in. Different lobbies have different statistics to throw out but in places such as San Francisco, for example, rents have risen where rent freezes have been abolished. Even if we get in the supply, it will take longer so many people will be put under pressure with their rents rising when they do not have the market opportunities to look for another rental property because the competition has not been created. It is a seller's market and not a renter's market, as we know.

The incentives for small-scale landlords are not sufficient. Many people may have inherited a house or bought one property, maximum two, as an investment. I note there is a distinction in the Government's proposal between people with up to three houses and those with four or more. We can keep rents at a frozen level and provide tax incentives to smaller landlords to ensure they stay in the market. They are the ones who keep the tenants in the properties. They are the ones who offer lower rents as long as they get guarantees that the house is being looked after. Commercial investors have hiked rents massively. As Deputy Tóibín and others have said, we need a plan to ensure that people cannot come in and buy large blocks of houses. The only way a block of houses should be bought is if it is a part of a strategic plan and those houses are, for example, beside a hospital where we would want to rent houses to doctors and nurses who are starting off in their careers.

Another example is that of an area where there is a shortage of teachers, where there could be affordable rents while people start their careers. The census figures, more of which will come out in September, indicate that the reason people left this country before the economic crash versus the reason they leave now has changed. Irish people are still leaving even when the economy is good, but we have seen mass immigration. That is putting pressure on housing. We need to be more strategic in what sort of work permits we provide. We also need incentives to make sure that the Irish people leaving because they cannot afford a house, such as nurses and teachers, stay in Ireland. They need those incentives and they need incentives to come back.

Ultimately, as everyone has said, it is down to supply. I still do not see why, if not in employee terms but in building, the State should not be the biggest constructor of housing. We did it in the 1950s when we were poor. We need a strategic plan to provide the infrastructure and build the houses. We have not seen that from the Government yet.

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