Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The topic I have tabled for consideration as a Commencement matter is a matter of huge importance and grave urgency. A recent report in The Irish Timesconfirmed my own impression of the private rented-dwelling market, which is that landlords are selling up. Some 40% of houses now on the market are as a result of landlords selling. The reason for this is appallingly obvious and comes down to the fact the Government has hopelessly mismanaged the relationship between private landlords and their tenants and properties. This is not a novelty. In the past, the Department in question abolished, as best it could, bedsits and caused 10,000 to 12,000 people, at the bottom end of the property ladder, to lose their home. Now we have a situation wherein if one lets a house for more than six months, one cannot recover possession of the property except for four stated reasons: first, that one wants to sell with vacant possession; second, one wants to refurbish the property, in which case, one is obliged to offer it back to the tenant; third, that one has planning permission to redevelop the property; and, fourth, that one wants it for a member of one's family. Apart from those reasons, one cannot get one's property back from a tenant at the moment.

All of that is compounded by a Sinn Féin policy initiative which states they want to bring about the situation whereby if one wants to sell a property, one must sell it with the tenants in situso that anybody who has been there for six months can stay there effectively forever. The property must be sold with the tenants in occupation. On that issue, the concept of "tenant" has been changed yet again by a colossal mistake in the Department, in the Custom House thought process, to encompass anybody. If, for example, a landlord lets a house to three people who share it, after a while they are entitled to bring in other people and disappear themselves. Thus, the landlord ends up with three people he or she did not originally have as tenants because the onus is on the landlord to establish a good reason the substitute tenants should not be able to stay there forever as well.This is crazy because it means that if you let out a house fully furnished to a high standard, and I had an executive let property that was very successful, so I know about this and I got out of the market for the reasons I am describing, the Government is now saying you will never get the property back - if Sinn Féin has its way, you will never ever get it back - and you are responsible for things like fridges, cookers and everything else, you let with the house in the beginning.

The time has come for the Government to cop on to the fact that it has driven out landlords and tenants and is now being helped by Sinn Féin's helpful policy proposal. The Government has driven out landlords from the private rental market. Some might ask whether this really matters because if a landlord puts a property up for sale, somebody will buy it. That is not a good response because the people who buy properties are different from those who can only afford to rent. There are families who cannot afford to buy for one reason or another but who need houses that they can rent and bring up their children in.

A big US real estate investment trust that lets out a tower block of apartments that are empty and unfurnished is entirely different from a landlord who lets out a fully furnished house. If the Minister of State wants to know why landlords have left the market, it is because of Government policies and nothing else.