Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I was doing so until I was interrupted. The Seanad debates in 2016 with the then Minister, Deputy Coveney, on the Government's last housing Bill were very productive and resulted in actual, tangible changes to the Bill. Many of the flaws in how rent pressure zones were designed, particularly the lack of definition of substantial change in the nature of property for the purposes of an exemption from rent controls, were raised in the Oireachtas at that time. I do not raise this to be party political but to point out that the Opposition has a role in this process too, and that should be recognised in the scheduling of debates.

Amendment No. 26 would require the Minister produce a report on the feasibility of a national deposit scheme and how best such a scheme could be implemented in the context of the Irish housing market. This report would be completed within six months and delivered to both Houses of the Oireachtas. It is an amended version of the amendment tabled by Deputy Darragh O'Brien in the Dáil, so we are hopeful for the support of Fianna Fáil for it today. This is not a new issue and both Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party discussed it extensively in the Dáil. This is an area in which bad landlords gouge tenants and use larger and larger deposit requirements to thin out the high number of people competing for tenancies. They are profiting from people's desperation, and this cannot be justified. It is bad enough for those with the necessary financial means and for whom two or three months' deposit is an annoying expense to compete on these grounds, but for people on lower incomes a two-month deposit requirement is enough to put any potential tenancy out of reach. It serves as a major bar for more vulnerable people competing in the private tenancy market, and those people need our support. We have heard examples from other countries where this works, and while I recognise that a large body of practical work will be needed to implement such a scheme, we need to get on with it.

I recognise that the Minister has committed to looking at this issue and that he plans to bring forward a Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny in the fourth quarter of 2019, but I am concerned by some of his remarks in the Dáil in which he labelled this area as no longer the priority it once was. The Minister has a large and very important brief and the Department works across many policy areas simultaneously. He said in the Dáil that the regulation of student accommodation was a higher priority. I am concerned that this crucial issue may struggle to compete with the other items in the Minister's brief, and I would be reassured if there was a report, with a legislatively mandated timeline, that supported the pre-legislative scrutiny process which the Minister has planned for later this year.I have deliberately drafted the amendment to ensure that the process would match the policy development schedule that will be under way in the Department. I see this as an amendment that will work with the provisions of the Bill the Minister has set out and in a complementary way to his own work. It would provide major reassurance to us in this House and to Deputies in the Dáil, where this issue came up continually on Committee Stage and Report Stage, that something will definitely be done. Every attempt to provide for it legislatively in the Dáil was rejected because the Minister said he did not want to deal with it in isolation but comprehensively. If he cannot accept the amendment from the Labour Party, this amendment would support that policy development process. This is worth the Minister's acceptance.