Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim mo bhuíochas do gach Seanadóir a ghlac páirt sa díospóireacht inniu. Is plé an-úsáideach agus an-dearfach a bhí ann. As my colleague, Senator Murphy, said, there are many aspects of the housing issue we can agree on. The one thing we should all be able to agree on is that we understand there is a crisis and a major problem.We need to address it and I am working hard with Senators and colleagues to do that.

In relation to the Bill, a number of matters have been raised which I will address briefly and maybe come back to on Committee Stage next week. I acknowledge the cross-party support from Opposition parties, Independents and my Government colleagues from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party for this fifth piece of tenancy legislation that I have brought forward in just less than a year as Minister.

Issues were raised around the area of the opt-out. It is optional for the tenant. I will keep it under review. If any landlord or institution thought this was a mechanism to get around the two-month provision, they would be acting illegally. It would be punishable. Complaints can be made to the Residential Tenancies Board. I gave a commitment in the Dáil that we would keep a close eye on it. We provided an opt-out for the student partly because many international students, with the way the courses are structured, are paying more than two months and sometimes the first semester up front. I responded to requests in that space but we will watch it. No one should abuse it. Anyone who does will be acting illegally and will be in breach of this Bill when enacted. All of the penalties that should apply will apply.

I turn to the measures in the Bill around deposits. I thank the USI for its engagement. I wanted to go further than the students wanted to. They have been an important part of it. I wanted this to apply to all tenants, not just students, and we would not make a distinction. The Bill brought forward in the Dáil by the Opposition, while useful, would have just had the two-month provision for students. That was good, but I thought we should go further. I have done it in this legislation. It applies to all tenancies. The 28-day notice period is absolute. A lesson that should be learned from Covid is that, unfortunately, a significant number of students ended up having financial difficulty and rents being withheld. We did not want to see that and many good providers of accommodation in that space did not want to see that either. These measures have been broadly welcomed.

On the extension of additional protections, I will say two quick things. We have about 300,000 registered tenancies in the country. That has dropped about 14,000 in the space of just over two years and continues to drop. I am acutely aware that measures we take have to be proportionate. Other measures put forward like three-year freezes and blanket bans, while I understand and respect that people can have that view, can have an unintended consequence and will have an understood consequence of reducing supply further in a constrained market and, basically, the mom and pop landlords continuing to leave.

The Government and I want, through the Housing for All plan and budget provision, to increase output and housing supply and to bring forward cost rental, which we are doing, for the first time. Senators opposite talked about the levels being quite low, but we are starting it. I wanted to start it within a year of the Government being formed, to build that capacity and offer proof of concept. That is what we will do. We will have 440 tenancies in place in the coming months and will build substantially on that. Cost rental, as Senator Martin said, has been a core belief and policy of the Greens. There is no question about that. I negotiated the programme for Government with colleagues in that regard. There is massive opportunity to expand this further. That is for another debate. We have had that in detail on the Affordable Housing Bill but we will move on with that. We will not just talk about it. The first cost-rental pilot project was announced in 2015. That was fine but those units have not been tenanted yet. We cannot wait six years so we wanted to move it on from there. The opt-out will be looked at.I am working on potential amendments for next week, as I have said. I cannot go into any more detail at this stage, but they could be significant. I will coming back into the Seanad to do that.

What I was saying about tenancies was that less than 2% of the 300,000-plus tenancies end up in dispute. We need to put that in context in that 98% or more of tenancies operate well. Less than 1% of tenancies are in arrears or arrears notices, which means 99% of tenancies are not. That also points to the Government's supports through the pandemic to the tune of billions, with €11.9 billion having been spent on social welfare supports, and rightly so, especially in the area of ensuring we have proper pandemic payments, emergency rent supplement and all of the other items.

We have not had the rent arrears crisis predicted quite vociferously by some last year. We did not have the tsunami of evictions predicted by some last August when we exited the unsustainable blanket eviction ban. It was not legally sustainable. We did not do it for fun; it just was not sustainable. We could not continue. That is why we put in permanent protections, which were not based on public health support, and additional changes, such as the rent arrears changes we brought in last August, on which we did not get unanimity, although I am glad others have now got in behind the extension of this legislation. That means the first time arrears are flagged and a landlord issues a rent-arrears letter, it must be copied to the RTB and the tenant must be told what assistance he or she will get. MABS is involved, and for the first time we have those data. The data quoted by a Senator opposite about the number of rent arrears letters issued are only available because of the legislation we brought forward last July, which legislation, on a point of information, the Senators opposite opposed at the time. However, that is in place now and is working. We have the information and we know the scale of arrears, which we did not before. That is good and is everyone working together.

I thank all Members for their contributions. There are elements we can improve on further. I have flagged I will be bringing forward a tenancy reform Bill in the autumn. I brought forward the student tenancy pieces and fit them into this legislation because I wanted them to be in place before the new academic year. That was the reason for that, but there are further changes coming down the track, which we have been working on with stakeholders and colleagues in the Government and the Opposition.

I thank all Members for their input today and look forward to seeing them next week on Committee Stage, and then we can get this legislation passed and signed into law by our Uachtarán.