Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I second the motion. I am delighted to be able to be in the position to do so because as my colleague, Senator Warfield, said, the housing crisis is definitely out of control. This motion could not be timelier. It addresses many of the problems faced by renters such as short-term letting, prices being driven up, people being forced to move home and rents that are too high and insecure.Our motion also draws attention to the poor standards in the private rental market. This is the aspect on which I want to focus in the time available.

We carried out a survey over the weekend which captured a glimpse of the poor quality of some available rentals. One respondent from the Tallaght area pointed to the nature of the problem: "I am afraid to ask the landlord to do anything in the house in case it upsets the applecart." People are in no position to stand up for themselves and ask for better standards because their tenancy rights are weak and they live in fear of eviction. Several respondents in the survey talked about there being black mould in their rental properties and nothing being done about it. One person had to call Bord Gáis when the landlord did nothing about the carbon monoxide alarm ringing in the rental property.

There is a need to tackle standards of living accommodation that are unsafe. In the first nine months of 2020, 87% of properties in Dublin city were deemed, on first inspection, to be non-compliant with the standards. This motion calls for local authorities to be adequately funded to carry out absolutely essential inspections. Several of the properties advertised on daft.ieare not up to standard, including some in Tallaght for which no building energy ratings, BERs, are displayed, despite there being no apparent reason for an exemption. South Dublin has some of the highest rents in the country, with the average amount charged standing at €1,814.

The standards I would particularly like to focus on today are those relating to energy efficiency. Again, our survey gave an insight into how bad things really are. One person said:

My box bedroom has been freezing all winter and there's nothing that can be done according to the landlord. I can barely afford to live here. If the rent goes up any higher I'll have to leave.

Another said: "Over winter all the oil in the kitchen turned to wax overnight and for a solid 3 months we could see our breath even with the heating on full blast." These stories are backed up by academic studies. We know from research conducted by John Curtis that rental properties are likely to have poor insulation. A total of 55% of rental properties have a BER of D or lower. Lower-cost rental properties are more likely to be in the E, F or G categories on the BER scale.

People are paying sky-high rents and, in return, they often get substandard accommodation that leaves them paying sky-high heating bills. One woman told us that she spends 70% of her wages on rent and bills. Every month she has to worry about affording to eat healthily. Energy poverty is a serious problem in the rental sector but the Government has not done much about it. The major change in respect of energy efficiency in rental properties came in 2009 when the Government introduced the mandatory BER system for properties offered for rent. The idea was that increased transparency would mean people could shop around in order to get more efficient homes and landlords would be incentivised to make more profit by increasing efficiency standards. That all sounds lovely in an ideal market where people can shop around. However, in a rental market where so many people are constantly on the precipice of homelessness, renters do not have the luxury of shopping around. They have to take whatever they can get.

The owners of some properties, including small dwellings with a useful floor area of less than 50 sq. m, are exempt from providing BER certificates. Presumably, this includes the small garden sheds that have been converted into rental properties. I fail to see why people who are living in glorified garden sheds do not deserve BERs. Surely this is something that should be looked at. Another problem with the BER system is a lack of compliance. One need only take a glance at daft.ieto see many homes marked as BER exempt that do not meet the criteria for exemption. Sinn Féin would address this problem with better resourcing of local authorities to carry out inspections.

Making the BER system mandatory was a welcome, albeit tiny, step in the right direction. In the 11 years since, however, the Government has not done much to help improve the energy efficiency of rental properties. It committed to a consultation on rental market energy efficiency in 2016, which was eventually conducted in 2019, but we are still, in 2021, waiting to see the results of it. There are grants available for retrofits but the level of uptake has been extremely underwhelming. There is a strong case for setting minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties to obligate landlords to make the necessary upgrades and make use of the grants that are available.I accept that landlords need an adequate lead-in time in order to plan, but this is an urgent matter, especially for people at the lower end of the rental market. We know the issues that lead to excess debt in the winter months due to poor energy efficiency. In the meantime, tenants are left in the precarious position where they are afraid to even ask for improvements to be made to rental properties.

People constantly say that Sinn Féin is attacking landlords and that we are anti-landlord, when that is not the case. We have said repeatedly that we want a private rental sector where tenants have security of tenure and affordability and where landlords provide a good service for a fair return. In fact, under Sinn Féin's proposals, we would have a much more stable rental market that is not just better for tenants but would be better for honest landlords too, rather than the split schemes we have at the moment where the big investors get tax deals and the smaller landlords do not. Right now, we need to give renters a break and that is what this motion will do. I encourage all Members to support it because it is coming from a constructive place. Renters are on their knees. They need a break. They need their rents reduced and they need better security of tenure. They need that support and they need support for our motion tonight.