Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for her contribution. I understand the reasons behind the amendment. It was gone through previously on Committee Stage when the Bill was progressing through the Dáil. On her first point, local authorities are building more houses than housing bodies. I do not wish to delay the House.

Essentially, the provision of social housing was reduced almost exclusively to one stream, namely Part V delivery, that is, the delivery of social housing homes on private land, in most cases by private developers. The private housing sector collapsed and, as a result, no social housing was being built. In addition, several local authorities were out of the practice of building social housing for far too long. Under Rebuilding Ireland, we have an ambition to increase the social housing stock by 50,000 and have several ways to achieve that such that the State and its citizens will no longer be exposed to one of our delivery mechanisms failing and, as a result, people not having a house in which to live. That is why we are providing social housing built by local authorities on local authority sites and local authorities are contracting and building social housing on private sites where the land is in an area in which people wish to live. Housing bodies are building social housing with State support and taking people off the housing lists. Local authorities and housing bodies are undertaking long-term leasing in situations where it makes more financial sense to lease the house than to build or buy it and it is far quicker than building it. In certain parts of the country, they are acquiring or buying homes where such are readily available and the second hand market is far cheaper than building a home. In addition, we have Part V, which is a small part of the overall. We have dramatically changed how we provide social housing such that if any one of those streams was to fail, it would not mean that social housing would cease to be built. That is how the landscape has changed.

A frustration I have is that in the discussion of social housing some academics, commentators, politicians and others only want to look at one stream and declare that it is real social housing but the rest is not. The Iveagh Trust has been providing social housing since before this State was founded and it does so very well, as do several other bodies. It is incorrect to state that what they provide is not social housing. We need to have an informed debate when we talk about the provision of social housing. Housing bodies are building thousands of homes, but local authorities are doing more. As Minister, I have been getting them to work together, even insofar as ensuring that housing bodies building on local authority land is part of the overall solution in the delivery of social housing.

In this section of the Bill we are trying to move to an annual registration of tenancies such that the RTB can have a modern and up-to-date picture of exactly what is happening in our rental sector - what rents are being charged, who is living where, the duration of tenancies are and everything else it will need to police the rental sector, including housing bodies as well. Currently, one only registers a tenancy at the commencement thereof and pays €90 per tenancy. The tenancy may last one or five years. Most tenancies last an average of two years. However, circumstances may change within the tenancy and we are not capturing that on an annual basis. We are recognising that by making annual registration the new law from 1 January 2020 without putting an additional burden on the landlord. We are reducing the charge for registering a tenancy from €90 to €40. It will be even less for housing bodies, which will face a charge of €20. Further, if one is registering more than ten tenancies, it is €8.50 per tenancy. From a financial perspective, €8.50 per year for each tenancy year is not too much of a financial burden, even for the smallest AHBs. Of course, there is an administrative burden but we will make this as easy as possible such that it falls in the first year of the tenancy. The tenants in most AHB tenancies are there for a long duration. The administrative details will not really change year in, year out. We want to build a system whereby, rather that having to resubmit all of the forms each year, there will be a simple online submission. It is not too much of an administrative or financial burden.

The annual registration is necessary to build the new type of RTB which I discussed. It will allow it to move to the annual registration of tenancies and not lose the registration fee, which is one risk. In recognition of the fact that we are moving to annual registrations, we are reducing the fee by more than halving it for ordinary landlords and, for AHBs bringing it right down, particularly if they have more than ten tenants. It is fair.