Tim Lombard (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairperson, Senator Keogan, for allowing me to contribute to this important debate. Home ownership and the rental issue are probably the biggest issues society faces. How we tackle them will define this Government and society itself. There are issues with regard to rent in which we must engage and talk about. Supply is key and it is the biggest issue in the rental market. The supply of housing and how we stimulate the market will be most important. There are issues and we have spoken about the planning process and its issues. We have had a lockdown for the past three months but we must start to talk about how we get the building industry going again. There are planning permissions that are running very close to their expiry dates, meaning we need to extend those dates. That issue must be looked at by the Cabinet in the near future, otherwise supply will be affected.

We have a huge issue with Airbnb, in particular in my part of the world, and with how it is sucking up the retail market. Airbnb involvement in the retail market in coastal and rural areas is a new phenomenon over the past five years. What it means is that it is cheaper for individuals to opt for the Airbnb model instead of renting their houses in the normal rental market. That has become a significant issue. If one is outside the rent pressure zone, one is totally unregulated. It means one has a free pass regarding planning permission status.If one is inside the rent pressure zones, there is regulation. However, Cork County Council found, on trying to get a list of active Airbnb properties in rent pressure zones, that it got an incomplete list from the Airbnb company. There are issues regarding regulation and how we can police Airbnb, which is sucking up rental properties at a rapid rate. That needs to be dealt with in the case of Airbnb properties, not only inside rent pressure zones but also outside of them. Without that, one will have the bones of 500 to 600 properties in my local authority area taken out of the market straight away. Those are rental properties traditionally that have now gone to Airbnb. How we tackle that must be by change in legislation.

Supply, as I mentioned, is the key issue. The fiasco of Irish Water is a significant issue in that supply. We are going through a county development plan process at present. Where there are 200 settlements in County Cork, 180 of them cannot get development because of insufficient water and sewerage. We can have development in 20 of those settlements. The other 180 - small villages and towns - cannot develop. Therefore, one will have real pressure on how sustainable growth in these communities will occur. We are fundamentally against rural once-off housing. We have stepped away from that. We are not allowing development in villages because we do not have adequate water and sewerage, and because of that we will be in a dilemma where we will push all our development into the few towns and villages that have sustainable water and sewerage. That will have a significant impact on the rental market. Because we will not have supply, we will not have the appropriate houses built.

There are significant issues here regarding supply. Airbnb has to be tackled. We cannot go down the rent pressure zones route and merely speak of planning permission. It has to be outside of that remit. When it comes to Irish Water, unless we tackle Irish Water's inability to deal with small settlements and small developments, we will not have balanced rural development. We will fundamentally have to change our policy when it comes to once-off rural housing because of the effects we will have on communities which will have no development because of our policies. Rent is the biggest issue. We need to sort out the demand. When we sort out the demand, we will go a long way towards sorting out the rental properties.