Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I am glad to have the chance to raise these important issues. I wish to discuss and deal with the issues preventing homeowners from renting out vacant houses and the tax that people have to pay. People must pay up to 50% in tax when they rent a private house or in respect of a house that they want to rent out. Fifty percent of €800 is only €400, and it is not worthwhile for many people who I know with these types of houses.

The other thing is that people cannot get tenants out when they want to. That is happening a lot, and people are afraid to rent out their houses.

People tell me the RTB has too much say, too much power and that it is in favour of the renter rather than the house owner but this is biting the renters as well because houses are vacant but are not available to be rented. I raised this issue with the Taoiseach almost two years ago. I gave him the instance of a road I know very well that runs from the top of the town in Kenmare through Kilgarvan and within five miles of Killarney town. There are 55 houses. People can get on the bus, which passes every half hour, almost, so there is transport available, but the houses are closed down. No one wants to rent them out because of the two issues I mentioned.

There has been so much talk about housing since I came up here in 2016 that if every word spoken was a concrete block, we would have hundreds of houses built around the country and there would be no problem because there would be more houses than we need. We must do everything and these houses are vacant. They are fine houses. The croí conaithe grant is great, but it takes too long to administer and there are too many loops and hoops to go through and get over. I thank the people who are administering it in Kerry County Council. They are great girls and they are doing their level best but it takes up to two years and many people are shying away from availing of the grant because the timeframe needs to be made much shorter.

I am asking the Government to do something to incentivise householders to rent out their houses. It should be something like the €800 tax free that was given to the people hosting Ukrainians. I did not realise until lately the Government was paying the €800. I am not asking for that at all and I want our own people to be seen after, but I am asking that house owners would get €800 tax free. There is also the €14,000 for those who rent a room in cities or whatever. That should be expanded. I am thinking of a scheme like that that allows people to not have to pay the tax or to get some help so they rent out the houses. These houses are not in what we might call populated areas but they have been grand and they could be grand if the house owners got help tax-wise or some incentive to help them go down the road of renting. If we got them at it they would stay at it but there is so much sour grapes about not being able to get people out of their houses when they want to get them out and the tax they would have to pay that they are not bothering to rent them out at all.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. If there is a situation where there are 55 vacant homes in one town in Kerry that is not good enough and it is something we absolutely need to address.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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That is only one road.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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That is only on one road. It is something we need to tackle. We have the Croí Conaithe grant. That was an effort to bring more of those properties back into the rental market, but clearly we need to do more. My answer covers many of the situations where a house can be taken back from a tenant and covers some of the taxation, but obviously a lot of the tax matters the Deputy mentioned would be for the Minister for Finance. I will certainly bring it back.

I assure the House that as set out in the programme for Government, this Government remains focused on growing the supply of much-needed rental accommodation and commits to continuing its support for renters and landlords, along with tackling vacancy and dereliction with enhanced compulsory purchase order powers and an ambitious grant system. The Government appreciates a landlord may sometimes need to take back possession of their property. Where a tenancy is of less than six months' duration, a landlord is not required to cite a reason for any notice of termination. In general, after six months the landlord must state in the notice of termination one or more of the following reasons: the tenant has failed to comply with the obligations of the tenancy; the dwelling is no longer suited to the needs of the occupying household; the landlord intends to sell the dwelling within nine months of the termination date; the landlord requires the dwelling for own or family member occupation; vacant possession is required for substantial refurbishment of the dwelling; or the landlord intends to change the use of the dwelling. The Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, established as an independent statutory body under the Residential Tenancies Acts 2004 to 2024, provides a tenancy dispute resolution service.

In 2024, my Department completed a review of the rental sector. This review noted clear challenges with the current system of rent controls while acknowledging the need to ensure the regulatory system for the rental market adequately balances the interests of landlords and tenants. My Department requested that the Housing Agency undertake a review to assess the operation of rent controls and it is expected that this review will be completed by the end of March 2025. The review will also consider the recommendations of the Housing Commission relating to rent regulation. Any potential future policy options that arise from this review will be considered by the Government. The Minister for Finance has responsibility for taxation measures but recent tax measures have been of benefit to the sector. These include the amount of tax deductible pre-letting expenditure being doubled to €10,000 in respect of a property that lay vacant for six months, which was reduced from 12 months; the introduction of the residential premises rental income relief to benefit landlords with relief worth up to €600 this year and rising to up to €1,000 from 2026; and the rent tax credit being increased to €1,000 per renter, backdated to 2024.

There are, therefore, measures there. I have set out the situations where a tenancy can be ended, but the Deputy is right. Most landlords out there have perhaps one or two properties for rent. They are not making extraordinary amounts of money out of it, but at the same time it has to make sense for them to stay in the market. That is why we have an issue. Many of these rental properties are being sold into private ownership and that may not necessarily be someone with a housing need or who is looking for a first home. We need to do it. We need to listen. We need to go back to the Minister for Finance and look at taxation, etc. This is an issue not just in Kerry but in west Cork as well and it needs to be addressed. We need to get vacant properties back into the rental market.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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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.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Deputy Healy-Rae. He made some good suggestions and they have to be taken on board, especially his point on partaking in any reviews. There has to be a question of balance, in particular of tenants' rights. We cannot overdo it and take away tenants' rights. They are entitled to have a right of tenure so they are not in precarious situations. The regulation of landlords has to be balanced. It has to be worth someone's while to stay in the rental sector; otherwise, we will lose properties to private sale, etc., to people who may not necessarily need them as a primary home. That has to be taken into account, and the Deputy has made that point well.

Regarding vacant houses, we will have to make a very difficult decision. In tourism towns in my constituency, as I am sure is the case in the Deputy's constituency, there are rows of houses that are completely vacant. I am sure that, when canvassing, the Deputy knocked on doors and found about ten houses in a row where there was no one there. A lot of those houses are used for Airbnb accommodation and short-term lets. We need short-term lets. Places like Kerry need them for tourism - that is 100% correct - but we have to strike a balance. We cannot have whole streets taken up with Airbnb accommodation, which is what has happened in some towns.

Whether through taxation or other measures we take, I agree with the Deputy there are issues and people are having difficulties in renting out their properties. We may need to review the Croí Cónaithe fund or increase the number of grants available. Whatever we need to do to get these vacant properties into the rental market, we should do. I again thank the Deputy for raising this issue.