Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Glaoim ar an Seanadóir Clifford-Lee anois.What we do not want to do is reduce supply while doing the right thing. We do not want to have a negative impact on supply in the sector. What we need to do is increase supply. We know this. We have been speaking about it for years and it just has not happened. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic has put a halt to construction. That will have an impact and we may as well acknowledge it. This does not take away from the efforts being made to improve affordability in the sector and ensure that rent does not eat up 50% of earnings and that people are not left wondering from month to month whether they can pay the rent and meet the bills or whether they will have nothing left over for living and enjoying life. That is the position many people find themselves in.

Senator Warfield referred to the situation in the capital. I lived in Dublin for quite a long time, as did my sister, so I know full well what rents are like in the capital and how it has got worse. I assure the Senator that it is a problem that has filtered out throughout the country. It is not just a city problem now. In County Mayo, the number of rental properties available is quite sparse. Very little is available to rent. That is because we had a decade in which people were unable to save a deposit and buy a house as they would normally do. There has not been that natural changeover of properties, with people moving on to build or purchase a home, freeing up the rental property they had in their 20s and making it available for other younger people coming through. This throughput has not been happening in the past decade and there is pent-up demand. I can see it.

In recent years, the number of representations I have had on housing has increased dramatically. When I was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 2016 it was not the biggest issue I was dealing with. I know it was a massive issue in the cities but that was not the case in Mayo. That changed, and two years later it was becoming the top issue coming through the door. There were people from all walks of life, with everybody finding it difficult to find rental properties, particularly in the bigger towns in Mayo such as Castlebar, Westport and Ballina. People were finding they had to move to the smaller villages and rural areas. This poses a difficulty in a rural county where we do not have public transport. These issues have a domino effect, with one issue feeding into the next.

With regard to the cost of rental properties in my home town of Castlebar, going back five years, a three-bedroom property would have rented for €600 or €700 but now we are looking at €1,100 or €1,200. There has been a huge increase in the cost of rents outside the cities. This has filtered into rural areas. This pressure is being felt by many young couples and single people. Very often we focus on young families, forgetting the large cohort of single people who are also looking for housing. Very often they are not considered. I know from dealing with the local authority that it prioritises families with children, and I understand this, but we need to look at the types of housing we are building. Not everybody wants to live in a three-bedroom semi-detached house. Some people want to have one or two-bedroom apartments. We also need to think about how we cater for older people and their housing needs. Many older people living in very big properties would love to downsize if they had the right place to go in their community. They may not want to downsize and move out of the village or town they have lived in all of their lives but they find there are no alternatives to moving far away.

We need to take a holistic approach to housing. We need to cater for the rental sector for those who want to rent. Senator Higgins is correct with regard to security of tenure. We need to build properties where younger people want to live in the towns and cities where they can access work. We also need to look at housing for older people who may want to downsize that is in a community setting and facilitates independent living. Many older people do not want to go to a nursing home. They want a smaller place to which they can step down to in the heart of the community they have grown up and lived in. This option just is not there.

If we take the approach whereby we are getting people through from rental properties who perhaps want to buy and build we will free up those properties for younger families coming through. If we allow older people to downsize if they want to, and not everybody does, we will see properties freeing up for those who need them. There is a suggestion that we keep building three-bedroom semi-detached houses with a patch of grass at the front and another at the back that nobody really wants. We are not listening to the public and the demands that are being made. We will be discussing housing as an ongoing issue in the country for decades to come but at least new ideas are coming through as to how we might cater for all demands, rather than keeping supply as narrow as we have been doing in recent years.