Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Sean Barrett for tabling this amendment which raises a very important issue in the context of the Irish housing market. Those of us of a certain generation have grown up with this view that if one did not own a property in Ireland, or if one was not trying to buy one, one was nobody. The thinking was that rent was dead money and that anybody with half a brain would not rent, in spite of the fact that in far flung places, such as Germany and France, people rented for their entire lives.

A very influential report entitled Private Rented - The Forgotten Sector very much illustrated the fact that renting in Ireland from the beginning of the 20th century onwards was very much in decline and was regarded with almost malevolence and that the only people who rented were those who could not get into home ownership or social housing and that they were invariably single, people without children and men. That entire profile has completely changed in the past decade.

As Senator Barrett said, one in five families in Ireland rent today. In Dublin, one in three families rent which is also true of Galway and of all of our major urban centres. We are living in a new age - a different era - when renting is a long-term housing solution for many people and to treat them as if they were second class citizens is unacceptable.

I was very struck by the statement of Professor Patrick Honohan, Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, that he would focus his entire attention on the buy-to-let mortgage market which will mean an end to those mortgages, that they will have to be repossessed and that he hoped there will be very few repossessions of owner-occupied family homes as if all of those people living in the buy-to-let property market were not families and that they did not live in family homes. A very significant number of Irish families live in rented properties. Their children go to local schools, they participate in the local GAA clubs and they are involved in local activities. These are their family homes and it is time to move on from pretending that we are living in the Ireland of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

If the Minister cannot accept this amendment in its entirety, will he accept the spirit of it because, as I understand it from Senator Barrett, it is trying to put a family living in rented accommodation into a position of security? Under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 which introduced security of tenure for tenants in the rented sector, albeit limited, anybody who steps into the role of a receiver or a mortgagee in possession should have to abide by the criteria of that Act and should have to step into the shoes of the landlord. It is only fair that someone who pays rent should be entitled to the services and so forth under the 2004 Act.

We have codes of conduct for people in arrears in regard to their principal private residences and how they should be treated. We also have codes of conduct on how banks are supposed to deal with repossessions and so forth but we have no codes of conduct on how banks and lenders are supposed to deal with tenants. It is almost as if we are dealing with - dare I say it as I do not want to go beyond the Pale here - Strumpet City in that these people do not matter as far as our lending institutions are concerned.

It is important to recognise the idea of home. It does not matter whether one lives in a principal private residence, social housing or rented housing. A home is a home and the way people are treated should reflect that. Will the Minister respect the spirit of Senator Barrett's amendment which is very well-intentioned? He raises what I see as an incredibly important issue in the Ireland of today. Believe it or not, Ireland is not the country with the highest home ownership rate in Europe; it has fallen below the European norm in terms of home ownership. Ireland has changed and our laws must reflect that.