Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I am in favour of this Bill and I commend Senator Warfield, his colleagues and his staff on the hard work they have done preparing it. I hope this legislation can progress quickly. All legislation goes through detailed scrutiny and reading at the relevant committees and that can only be helpful in progressing Bills. The proposal before us, however, is already very strong. It is something we should support. I will not speak at length about the nuts and bolts of the legislation because Senator Warfield has given a clear, thoughtful overview of why this proposal is needed and its practical impact.

This is a straightforward common-sense proposal. I am surprised the PSRA, or some other similar body, is not already carrying out the kind of oversight function proposed in the Bill. The Minister of State may feel that systems for quality control are already in place. The examples cited by Senators, however, that are appearing in newspapers every week, are surely evidence that those quality control measures are not working properly. The stories regarding large groups of people sharing tiny cramped rooms are disgraceful. The people in those situations are often migrants or members of other disadvantage communities. I have no doubt the Minister of State agrees that it is disgraceful.

I was reared in the tenements in the 1960s and 1970s. I know what it is like to live in a house full of people. The houses next door to us were jam-packed with families and there were often as many as ten children in each family. It is different today. There was a community spirit back then and everybody looked after each other. Today, we are dealing with adults crammed into tiny little rooms. This is degrading and a horrendous way for any human being to live. We recently opened a new tenement museum on Henrietta Street. Looking at some of the rental properties in Dublin, such a museum may not be necessary. That is the reality of the situation. I am glad to see the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, supporting this legislation and other proposals on housing. It is right for USI to fight this awful situation and the union has my full support. In terms of the Bill before us, it is not a radical proposal to say that letting agents should assume a meaningful level of responsibility for what is being advertised. The Minister of State would agree that one would not let a car dealership advertise and facilitate the sale of vehicles below the minimum legal standards. Similarly, I do not believe letting agents should be facilitating rental properties that do not meet the legal minimum standards. We set these legal standards for a reason and we need to ensure they are met. This should not place too high a burden on the letting agents.

Looking at the Bill, the most likely outcome in practice would be that individuals will see and report these sorts of properties and the PSRA would make an assessment and issue direction to the letting agents. The agents will not need to do lengthy exhausting reporting. A process such as this might also make some letting agents reconsider the quality controls they put in place, which can help further.

Senator Coffey stated this would scare landlords out of existence. To be honest, some of them need to be scared out of existence because what they are doing is horrendous.

Overall, there is deep frustration among the Opposition that while we can keep fighting on this issue, we cannot allocate the resources needed to fix the crisis. Restrictions on the right of the Opposition to legislate often mean we cannot compel the State to act, for example, to build social and affordable housing. That is ultimately the decision of the Government. While the Government may stick to the contention that the current policies are working, I would ask the Minister of State to look at the evidence, that is, the numbers on paper and on Dublin streets, and reconsider this position. The Minister of State, Deputy English, is a good man. He is authentic and he cares so I would ask him to reconsider this.

What the Opposition can do, however, is look at how the system is operating and try to improve on that. We can look, for example, at the dysfunctional rental market and how it works in practice. We can see obvious fixable problems, such as below standard properties being advertised, and try to address them. This Bill takes an important step in that direction and I commend it to the House.