Seanad debates

Thursday, 26 September 2019

10:30 am

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are a number of applications but I do not think the whole of Dublin is going to become co-living all of a sudden. There has always been a form of unplanned co-living here. People have shared houses and tried to turn family homes, which were not built for renters and co-living, into co-living spaces. That is not a good outcome. This involves allowing for planned co-living models that work in other countries and might prove useful here for supply. Some people in the private sector want to have a co-living option. That is their decision. Co-living is not an ideal solution for people who do not want to live this way but feel they have no other choice. That is the Senator's concern. All the other actions in housing mean that people will not be put in a position that they have no choice but to co-live.

We discussed the build-to-rent model when we introduced the Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness and the strategy for rent. Everybody asked me why we could not adopt the model used in Austria, Germany and other countries where there is institutional investment in rental properties or build-to-rent schemes. That is what we provided for. We wanted to attract funds, ideally Irish money from credit unions, for example, to fund purpose built properties to rent. That initiative will eventually be successful. I accept that when rents are high this will not look like a success at the start. The initiative will increase supply which, in turn, will reduce rents. Build-to-rent is only one small part of housing development. It will have an increasing role in some of our cities because the type of build-to-rent model we want cannot be funded by some of the previous players who built houses. We needs funds to do this as well. Build-to-rent is another space in the market and will not build housing for everyone. It has been portrayed wrongly. We can debate the issue again at some stage.

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