Averil Power (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I thank her for and acknowledge the good work she has done in this area and I respect her for it. I watched the monitor when she made her opening remarks. I noted that she acknowledged the work that was done by her predecessor, Michael Finneran, which is good.

The Government has made massive progress with the sector over the past 18 months and previously. Colleagues have referred to the Residential Tenancies Act and to the great changes in security of tenure for tenants. I am drafting a dispute resolution process. In a previous life I was a student union officer at Trinity College Dublin so I know about the nightmare scenarios faced by students. For example, there were poor standards in accommodation and students were at the mercy of landlords because there was no independent dispute resolution process. However, great improvements have been made.

I support the Minister of State's remarks on bedsit regulations. Four years is plenty of notice, and it is remarkable that anybody would try to justify bedsits in this day and age. It is incredible to hear about the conditions in bedsits that people had to live in, which persisted for so long.

Focus Ireland has made suggestions on how to roll out the new regulations and asked us to do as much as possible to support tenants. Some of its suggestions have merit and I shall mention some of them. It recommended that local authorities implement an information campaign to inform tenants about the new regulations and about non-compliant bedsits, and deliver leaflets in areas with a high concentration of bedsits, such as particular parts of Dublin. A leaflet drop would let people know about the new regulations and advise them about their options. It could also advise them about housing agencies that would help and urge them to contact their local authorities. A suggestion has been made that tenants living in bedsits should be fast-tracked for housing needs assessments. In terms of prioritising people on a housing list, the local authority should consider bedsit dwellers in the same way it does everybody else. It is important to arrange assessments straight away if we want tenants to move out of bedsits.

There have been great improvements in tenants' rights, which is welcome, and other improvements are in train. However, many find themselves experiencing certain conditions. First, we must identify the landlords. As Senator Wilson pointed out earlier, the vast majority of landlords have one or two properties. A large number of them never wanted to be landlords and do not want to be landlords now. I have two friends who each bought a one-bedroom apartment before they married but bought a house when they started a family. They rent out both apartments now because they are so deep in negative equity that they cannot sell them. There are a lot of people trapped in a similar situation. Many of these families are also tenants because they cannot afford to buy a house. They must rent a house while renting their previous properties. People are caught in a messy downward spiral that is the fallout from the property crash.

Many landlords do not earn money from renting their properties because they are losing a fortune on properties they cannot sell. It is unfair that they must pay tax on losses from rental income. At present people must pay the universal social charge on rental income even if they make a loss. Changes were made to the mortgage interest supplement so now they can only write off 75% of their mortgage interest. People are paying tax on losses, which is extraordinary when one compares them to multinational companies earning massive profits that can write off every expense under the sun to minimise their tax exposure. At the same time families are losing money on apartments and houses that they cannot sell and the properties are a millstone around their necks.

I listened to the debate in the other Chamber on the budget speech by the Minister for Finance. I was genuinely shocked when he said that the Government had decided to impose PRSI on rental income. It is incredibly unfair that people must pay PRSI on a loss from next year onwards. I do not think anyone would dispute that landlords should pay tax if they make a profit from their rental accommodation, but a landlord should not have to pay tax if he or she makes a loss. That is a basic principle and one that is accepted across the taxation system for companies and everybody else. At present the only people who pay such tax are landlords, but many of them never wanted to be in that situation and have problems with negative equity properties and mortgages. I know the Minister of State is a reasonable person and I urge her to ask the Government to reconsider that tax before the PRSI change comes into force.