Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. It is appropriate that this legislation is coming before us to extend the protections for people who find themselves in financial difficulty on the PUP, have difficulty paying their rent and are in financial difficulty in general. At least this protection is now here until January. Please God, this pandemic will be somewhat behind us in January. Hopefully, by then, the population will be vaccinated and we can return to some level of normality.

Post-pandemic, we probably need to look at what long-term protections we can put in place for renters because evicting people from their home should be the last possible action. It should be the final leg of the journey. I know there are times when this just happens and it has to happen for various reasons but it should be the final step. From our experience with the pandemic, we should reflect on how we can put further reasonable protections in place. I know the protections in place in this country are probably among the best in the EU but we should always strive to do a bit better.

There must be protection for landlords in the case of antisocial behaviour, violence, drug dealing or vandalism. Most landlords in this country are accidental landlords. They are people who bought a property after being advised by financial institutions that it was the right thing to do in terms of having an income when they retire and are now in negative equity. Those people want to do the right thing. In 99.9% of cases, they do the right thing but we need protections there. We must remember them because often accidental landlords in particular feel they are forgotten about and have no rights. This is not and should not be the case.

The proposal in this legislation relating to the deposit and one month's rent for students is long overdue and should have been done years ago. What went on in the on-campus accommodation at some of our State-funded universities was nothing short of disgraceful. I can remember how when I was in college in the mid-1990s, it cost €3,000 to live on campus in UCD and one paid it twice a year. I struggle to think what it costs today. I do not know but I am sure it is much higher than that. It should be one month's deposit and one month's rent and that is that. They are the conditions most other people benefit from and it is only right that this should be done. What happened in UL last year in terms of students not getting their money back and the lobbying that had to take place to rectify that situation was disgraceful.When we review the tenancy legislation, when there is a little more time and a little more calmness to do so and when we are not in the midst of a pandemic, we may look at strengthening further the rights of students. I believe in the concept of on-campus accommodation. I myself benefited enormously from it as somebody with a disability. I was able to get involved in college life and political life in college and all the benefits of living on a campus. It helped my overall development and I have no doubt it also benefits the thousands and thousands of students who live in on-campus accommodation.

We are looking also at short-term lets, an area I wish to raise with the Minister. We need to look at the density of short-term lets in some of the seaside resorts and some of the cities around the country. We do not want to return to that. Short-term lets have a very important place but they cannot just dominate.

We have a lot of work to do on housing, but 50,000 houses have been built since 2016. That is often forgotten. I have no doubt we will reach the target of 35,000 to 40,000 houses per year. When we reach an equilibrium in housing, it will be when supply and demand are reasonably well matched. That is the equilibrium we will have to achieve and reach. That is how we will deal with rents. Once there is supply, the market will control the rents, but until then we have responsibilities in that area.