Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have an entirely fresh topic. It is approximately five years since regulations were introduced by the then Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government banning the letting of what are commonly called bedsits. As a result, a huge number of tenants in bedsit accommodation found that it was no longer appropriate. It became a criminal offence for landlords to maintain those properties in the condition they were at the time. An awful lot of the properties were made the subject of evictions and were then sold redevelopment. One of the curious features of this is that some 10,000 or 12,000 people were affected by that massive clearance of tenants. A strange phenomenon is that, at the same time, the number of people sharing houses in Dublin and in every city in Ireland increased. These individuals share the same bathrooms as their housemates. Objectively, very little changed in one sense but the effect of the regulations to which I refer was to drive out the most vulnerable tenants and those with the least money and resources. It also removed the first step on the ladder for people migrating to the cities in the context of accessing accommodation.

It is a curious irony that this was done in the interest of housing standards at a time when a crisis was developing. That crisis has led to many people being unable to find accommodation and there is a shortage of separate units available in a city. I ask the Leader to consider asking the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, or a Minister of State at his Department, to come to the House to explain why that to which I refer was done and who takes responsibility for the fact that, in the long term, it probably caused homelessness and that it certainly drove up rents. Second, and more importantly because I am not only interested in a retrospective blame game, will the Leader call the Minister to tell us if the rule is still being enforced. If there are bedsits still in existence, are housing inspectors prosecuting people for maintaining them? At the very least, should a moratorium on the enforcement of those regulations be considered rather than driving people out of the lowest-rung-of-the-ladder-type homes during a housing crisis, which has been the unintended effect of this intervention in the housing market?