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Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 23 Feb 2017

Vol. 940 No. 2

Priority Questions

I remind the Minister, the Minister of State and Deputies that there is a six and a half minute slot for each question - 30 seconds to introduce, two minutes for the ministerial reply and then one minute each for the supplementary and reply. I ask everybody to adhere to this because if we do not, some people will lose out.

Emergency Accommodation Provision

Barry Cowen

Question:

1. Deputy Barry Cowen asked the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the status of the action plan target for removing the use of commercial hotels for short-term emergency homeless accommodation; and the alternatives that will be put in place. [9429/17]

My question relates to the commitment given in the Rebuilding Ireland document to removing people from a situation in which they have to reside in hotels and emergency accommodation. Will the Minister elaborate on progress in that regard? I am conscious that some of the units into which people are being moved before they get permanent housing are being managed by housing agencies or associations and have tenancies attaching to them. This was relayed to me yesterday. Is it causing an issue for some people in those tenancies when they expire or go beyond the tenancy? Is it causing difficulties in its own right as well? Is there provision that it will not be the case in this instance?

The Deputy will receive my written reply but I will give him a verbal answer because it might be more helpful. A significant number of families have been housed or we have found homes for them. There have also been significant numbers of families coming into homelessness. The figure was 87 in the month of January. The challenge is to reduce the numbers coming into homelessness and accelerate the numbers coming out. We have an agreement with the CEOs of the four Dublin local authorities to try to share the responsibility here for transitioning families from hotel rooms into more suitable accommodation. The majority of those will be into social housing, either through rapid build social housing, conventional social housing or social houses that have been purchased or brought back into use from voids.

We will also be very proactively using the homeless housing assistance payment, HAP, which was very successful last year. There were approximately 800 homes found for individuals and families through the latter. Some of the families will be in what we call family transition hubs on a temporary basis. It is emergency accommodation specifically kitted out for families with homework clubs, facilities for children and much more normalised family-style facilities in terms of where people eat that are safe and clean and so on. Respond! opened one in Drumcondra at the start of the year that can cater for 32 families. It is quite a successful model. We want to have that type of approach available for families so they can be looked after on a temporary basis while we find a transition for them into either long-term tenancies or social housing, which is ultimately the answer here.

The Minister mentioned the family transition homes. I am concerned that people on waiting lists do not have the same opportunities available to them if the transition homes have leases of up to two years' duration. It was a bold commitment that was made in the document. I acknowledge that and wish the Minister every success with it. I hope the target of ending that as a source of accommodation by June 2017 can be achieved. Four options will be available between now and then. As an example of the Minister moving in the right direction, how successful has it been since the document was produced? How many families have been moved out of commercial hotels since the document was produced? Does the Minister have an idea?

Last year 2,700 housing solutions were put in place for homeless individuals and families. I will have to get the figure for the split between the two but many were families. If one looks at the figure for January, which was not a good figure overall in terms of homelessness and which people have commented on, the number of homeless adults has increased. That was not a huge surprise to us considering that we put a lot of extra emergency beds into the system. Those beds have been filled by and large so it is not surprising the numbers are up somewhat. If one looks at the number homeless families, it is down by 33 and the number relating to dependants is down by 98. We are making some progress there considering 87 families came into homelessness in that month. The truth is that in the past number of months we have managed to stop the significant increase by taking a lot of people out of homelessness as quickly as possible. We need to ensure that we slow down the numbers coming into homelessness and continue to increase the pace in which we can facilitate the transition out of emergency accommodation. I am still confident we can do that by 1 July; I have always said it would be in the first half of this year and there will obviously be a difference. That only gives us four months. It is a big job to get between 700 and 800 families out of hotel accommodation and into appropriate accommodation in that period of time, but we are determined to do it.

Will the Minister forward the figures relating to what has happened since and the projected figures between now and 1 July?

If it helps, I can go through the projections we have done with the local authorities. I can do that with all spokespeople if they would like to see them so they can see what we are trying to do. It is ambitious but it is credible.

Will the Minister quantify what has happened to date since the publication?

We can do that too. It is no problem.

Mortgage to Rent Scheme

Eoin Ó Broin

Question:

2. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin asked the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he will provide greater detail on proposals to involve private equity firms in the revised mortgage-to-rent scheme, including information on the financing of private equity lease arrangements, security of tenure for homeowners and tenants and the involvement or otherwise of distressed mortgage holders who do not qualify for social housing. [9093/17]

I want to ask questions about the mortgage-to-rent review that was published last week. We all know the scheme has not been a success. There have only been 217 mortgage-to-rent cases completed over six years. I welcome a number of the proposals relating to the scheme. These should assist in some respects. My question relates to the potential involvement of equity funds in buying up tranches of mortgages. Will the Minister give us more information on how he sees the pilot schemes running between now and October on three issues in particular? How will security of tenure for the tenant be secured as it is in the context of mortgage-to-rent arrangements with approved housing bodies?

How will the financing be done, both in terms of the percentage of market rent and any other financial supports that currently apply to approved housing bodies, and will they also be applied to vulture funds?

I and my Government colleagues are acutely aware of the challenges faced by households in mortgage arrears and who potentially are at risk of losing their homes. Rebuilding Ireland includes a range of actions that are targeted at assisting borrowers and ensuring that a range of suitable restructuring options is available that ultimately seeks to support borrowers to remain in their homes. As part of those actions I have sought, through the review of the mortgage-to-rent scheme, to ensure that those households who have no realistic prospect of returning to solvency can be supported to remain in their homes in a secure social housing tenancy arrangement thereby avoiding additional pressures on the rental and social housing sectors.

The review acknowledged that the current operating model, which relies on approved housing bodies to purchase individual properties, may not have the capacity to meet the needs of all borrowers who may be eligible for the scheme. In order to test the operability of alternative funding models for the scheme, the Housing Agency will work with a number of financial entities that have come forward with an interest in working with the mortgage-to-rent scheme to progress a number of pilot alternative lease arrangements. The contractual and lease arrangements that are required to secure these units from a local authority perspective require detailed consideration and the questions the Deputy has asked need answers. Overall, these pilot projects are in a developmental stage and my Department is working with the Housing Agency in this regard. I will be in a better position to set out in more detail how the pilot projects will operate and how the private investors will be selected when this development work is complete.

I have met a number of these organisations and most of them are not motivated by profit but they need a certain minimum rate of return to get funding and backing. Essentially, instead of banks having to deal with individual properties and individual approved housing bodies and selling the properties one by one, the banks would cluster groups of properties that would qualify for the mortgage-to-rent scheme, the owners would also qualify under the new more flexible criteria and we would put together a financial package, which would mean that we could deal with 20, 30 or 50 cases at a time, which would be in the interests of the borrowers and the banks concerned. The opportunity to deal with significant increased numbers will flow from that.

I thank the Minister for his reply. Any of us who is keen to see greater solutions for those in mortgage distress will keep an open mind on this. The first key issue is security of tenure. As the Minister knows, under the current rules, if somebody mortgages to rent with an approved housing body, they effectively have a lifetime tenancy. Will the same type of principle apply in these cases? If we consider, say, a 20-year lease with a fund, even a long-term reputable investment fund, the difficulty is about what will happen at the end of the 20-year period. There is also the issue of the financing because there is considerable financial support for the approved housing bodies, albeit not as much as they would like, both in terms of the 40% figure, essentially a grant deposit, as well as the €15,000 grant for refurbishment. If the involvement of funds involves an approved housing body and a fund, as one model is proposing, that has implications, but if it just a fund that is going to purchase large volumes of distressed mortgages, does the Minister envisage those involved having the same access for the €15,000 grant for repairs or, for example, something similar to the capital loan and subsidy scheme, CLSS, payment to assist them with a deposit? What is the current thinking on those issues?

I have met a number of the organisations behind the funds to explore how this might work. At least one of them is now an approved housing body as well. The one in which David Hall is involved, for example, applied to become an approved housing body and it believes it can raise sufficient capital with very modest rates of returns. The business model will be something along the lines that a local authority will agree to effectively lease a property under a normal leasing arrangement for 20 years with an option to renew after 20 years. The security of tenure for people in these properties should be more or less the same as a normal social housing tenant in a long-term tenancy arrangement. In the case of approved housing bodies that look to State to partially fund acquisitions, that is a slightly different model. There is a third model whereby funds seek to invest in social housing, knowing that the State will give a guaranteed rent for a long time. They will be looking for low levels of returns with very high security, which is a classic pension fund-type model. We have asked the Housing Agency to work through these models with the different people and organisations concerned and then we will choose the ones we will deal with. From my experience of the organisations we have met, they all have pretty altruistic motives in this respect. This is not a vulture fund-type set-up; they are organisations that have been set up to try to improve and provide more social housing and to put in place a long-term funding arrangement to facilitate that.

Certainly that is the case in respect of the business model David Hall and his associates have put in place. However, whether that is the case for the likes of Arizun or Merrion Capital, for example, we are not yet sure and that is because we do not know the detail. As soon as some of that detail is available, the housing committee might be a good place to tease that out. Many of us would like to support a good initiative that allows people to remain in their homes.

There are two other questions in this respect. The first relates to those people in mortgage distress who do not qualify for social housing support under the current legislation and whether the funds may provide an avenue for addressing their long-term housing needs. In addition, the approximately 20,000 buy-to-let properties that are more than 90 days in arrears and which have tenants in them clearly will not benefit from this scheme. Equally, however, if those tenants are in receipt of rent supplement, the local authorities cannot purchase those houses. What is the Government's thinking in terms of how to deal with those two sections of the distressed mortgage market?

My Department can only take decisions and responsibility directly for those who qualify for social housing. There are broader considerations potentially within Government and the Department of Finance on whether we extend those criteria. There is an ongoing discussion as to whether, for example, we extend income thresholds around social housing eligibility and there are arguments for and against that. What we have done, which is quite a significant change, is we have launched the Abhaile programme whereby homeowners and borrowers can now access, if they are in real difficulty, free legal assistance and free financial advice and assistance. On top of that, for people who have no hope of being able to repay unsustainable loans, there is an obligation on banks to give a very good reason as to why they would not work with a mortgage-to-rent type system. We have widened the eligibility criteria for that in terms of qualification of a property, in that a property with two spare bedrooms can qualify and the value of the property can also be higher but the eligibility criterion for the applicants must be that they qualify for social housing. Otherwise, we get would get into the territory of moral hazard. If we do not have some income limit, we will have people seeking to potentially stay in households when they may have unsustainable debt but also have an income level that could allow them to provide themselves with alterative accommodation without too much difficulty. There are various issues to consider. We have spoken to the Department of Finance about that but the core point is we are significantly expanding the mortgage-to-rent scheme and I hope it will result in a significant increase in numbers.

Housing Issues

Barry Cowen

Question:

3. Deputy Barry Cowen asked the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the potential that refurbished or converted spaces above commercial properties in town and city centres have for increasing residential supply; and if he is considering making changes to the building control regulations to facilitate the use of these spaces. [9430/17]

I welcome today's announcement on the expansion of the scheme that was piloted in Carlow and Waterford. It will, in the main, apply to existing commercial properties and will allow them to be converted for residential use. I accept that construction costs that would be involved in those works are excessive enough in their own right.

However, the certification and compliance costs, especially in this instance, are crucial. The assigned certifier system is excessive in cost. We believe it should be replaced by local authorities in an effort to reduce those costs, improve local authority revenue, get units in place and reduce rents. I am particularly conscious of over-the-shop developments, the difficulties regarding disabled access and certification in this regard and fire certificates. Assigned certifiers may not be in a position to sign off on these certificates unless these compliance issues are addressed.

I think we all agree that there is great potential in both schemes. What was announced today is the next phase of the repair and leasing initiative, which has been successful in Waterford and Carlow. The plan is to roll out that model. The Deputy has previously called for the model to be available in Offaly and other counties. We also want it to be available everywhere. The scheme is being progressed. A total of €32 million is secured for the scheme, but again there is potential for further roll-out if needs be because it is a successful scheme. This should be considered as one phase. There will be more to come.

To concentrate on the Deputy's question, which concerns the potential for other spaces in urban centres,we agree with his proposal. There is great potential in it. We have flagged this in A Programme for a Partnership Government, published in May 2016, which we were all part of putting together. It sets out the ambitious priority attached to urban regeneration by the Government, incorporating a series of specific actions aimed at facilitating the regeneration of our urban centres, many of which have been adversely impacted by the economic downturn. Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, published in July 2016, further reinforces the Government's commitment to urban regeneration.

Pillar 5 of Rebuilding Ireland is specifically focused on utilising existing housing stock, with a key objective of ensuring the existing vacant housing stock throughout the country and across all forms of tenure, in both the public and private sectors, is used to the optimum degree possible. Deputy Cowen and I discussed the scheme today and earlier in the week as well.

In this context and further to action No. 5.11 of Rebuilding Ireland, a working group that I chair and which involves senior representatives from my Department and many other Departments, local authorities and other relevant actors has been established to bring forward proposals for new urban regeneration measures as early as possible. It is intended that the new measures will complement the existing regeneration activities under my Department's social housing capital programme as well as other initiatives.

Owners of vacant commercial units in urban areas, including vacant or underutilised areas over ground floor premises, face a number of regulatory requirements, exactly as Deputy Cowen said, to advance projects for their re-use for residential purposes. Such requirements may include planning permission and building control approval as well as requirements regarding protected structures, which can present regulatory barriers to the re-utilisation of vacant commercial space for residential purposes.

As part of its deliberations in the working group and in line with the Rebuilding Ireland commitment, we are reviewing planning legislation to allow the change of use of vacant commercial premises in urban areas, including vacant or underutilised areas over ground floor premises, into residential units without having to go through the planning process. Such vacant units could then potentially be brought into productive and beneficial use for housing purposes earlier than might otherwise be the case. We expect the working group to publish and finish this report in the second quarter of this year because we recognise that this is urgent.

Separately, my Department, working with Dublin City Council in the context of the living city initiative, is exploring the potential for further streamlining the approach to redeveloping and re-utilising vacant properties. In this context, processes and requirements regarding planning, building control, fire safety and the conservation of historic buildings are also being considered. The working group membership includes architects, and we understand the situation. Very often it is impossible to bring these buildings back into use. We are determined to find solutions to this.

The Minister of State will have more time.

I thank the Minister of State for his response. I detect an effort to get to the nub of the matter by virtue of the working group he has in place that is investigating the matter. He says he hopes recommendations will emanate from the working group by the end of the second quarter. I ask him to ensure this happens and that, based on those recommendations, the working group sees fit to find the mechanism that can alleviate the problem of certification of building controls. The recommendations should not compromise in allowing for and creating ease of access for people who wish to develop these properties in such a way that the end result will be what we all want to see, which is more property being made available and the rental deficiencies in all towns throughout the country being addressed. I would welcome that.

Regarding the certified assessor and the associated costs for the building sector in general, as I have said on numerous occasions the costs in this country are excessive when compared with those of the likes of the North. I have asked the Minister of State to consider this before. I ask him to allow his working group to investigate and make a recommendation as to the feasibility and viability of, and potential associated with, a new scheme whereby the local authorities would be that assessor. This would offer an opportunity for the scheme to be streamlined and standards maintained throughout the country. The standards are not necessarily compromised at present but they are definitely excessive, are too great a cost and feed into the more general problem of excessive construction costs.

This is an issue about which Deputy Cowen has real concerns. I share these concerns, so I have put much time and effort into meeting people in the business who are becoming assigned certifiers and carrying out this work. There is a great range of costs out there. We are analysing these costs in our Department. We have two working groups on the overall costs of construction, which Deputy Cowen and I have discussed. The Deputy has had discussions with the Minister, Deputy Coveney, on the matter as well. There are two separate reports analysing all the costs. It might not be the case that we compare that badly with other countries, from what I can see, but we analyse this as well and we must keep pushing the cost down.

There is much misinformation out there in respect of the assigned certifier. I stress, and I have said this before, that the Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, of which the Deputy is a member, could do great work to analyse and go through this area as a committee and a public forum. I have met companies and individuals who can do this work at much lower prices than those I am hearing about. I stress that the committee is a perfect place to analyse this and I would encourage it to do so. The work we are doing in the working group on vacant buildings, both commercial and residential, is about trying to find ways to reduce the costs and the timelines and make it viable to bring these buildings back into use. The repair-and-lease initiative was discussed today. That is what this is about. We recognise that people sometimes own these properties but have no cash and cannot bring them back into use. Therefore, we are finding ways to make money available upfront to bring them back into use. However, we must try to adjust the rules and regulations without reneging on quality, design or the historic purpose of the building. There are other ways to take a more common sense approach to this-----

The Minister of State will have another minute.

-----which is what we are trying to do, so I think Deputy Cowen will agree with our approach. The report will be published in the second quarter. That is the bottom line on that.

The commitment was made by the Minister of State further to recommendations over recent months to allow the Housing Agency to conduct an assessment of construction costs. This will identify various aspects associated with what we believe to be excessive costs, one of which will be, I have no doubt, the area of certification. It may well be that on publication of the report, we could enter into an agreement with the committee to ask it to make recommendations immediately that can feed into a decision process as soon as possible in order for this issue to be addressed.

I would welcome that. That is what we are trying to do. We are trying to share our work with the committee because the work being conducted by both is similar. The two investigations into the costs are under way. I stress to the Deputy that there is great opportunity regarding the costs of the certifier. I ask people in this business to explore the options out there, even before we publish our reports. I am very aware of the different prices. People need to do their homework. We can only present facts and gather information, and we will do so, but there is a lot of scope to get fair deals. I have seen the different prices quoted. I will send Deputy Cowen the names of people who might be able to give him different figures because he seems to have seen only one set of data.

Local Authority Housing Provision

Mattie McGrath

Question:

4. Deputy Mattie McGrath asked the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government his views on the fact that local authority housing output from the first quarter to the third quarter of 2016 for County Tipperary amounted to three new builds; the measures his Department will take to increase this number in partnership with the local authority in County Tipperary; if his Department will allow Tipperary County Council to proceed with public-private partnerships and a company (details supplied) to deliver local authority units; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9397/17]

According to figures supplied to me, in County Tipperary, from the first to the third quarter of 2016, the county council only constructed three new builds. This is an utter shame and a shambles. The Government has failed in this regard. Between the Departments, the Minister of State, including his role in the previous Government, and the local authorities, there has been utter failure. We have more than 3,000 people on the housing list. Will the Minister of State examine the possibility of the provision of turnkey projects through public private partnerships? If the Government is not able to do this, it should not be like the dog in the manger. Let somebody else do it because the people need houses.

Last Monday, I published a status report for social housing construction projects which lists all approved projects up to the end of 2016, including those at various stages of advancement through planning, design and construction and those delivered in 2016. This report is available on the Department's website, and I encourage people to look at it.

The status report includes 16 projects of various scales for the Tipperary County Council area, either recently completed or being advanced.

On top of this list of projects either recently completed or in the pipeline, I continue to approve further new social housing construction projects. These include, in the case of Tipperary, a further €9.5 million for the construction of 60 new social homes in Thurles, Newport and Carrick-on-Suir, which I approved earlier this month.

Local authorities have also been undertaking the targeted acquisition of properties, and over the past 12 months, I have provided almost €10 million to Tipperary County Council for this purpose.

Tipperary has also benefited from departmental funding to return vacant social housing to use, with around 276 such units supported through an Exchequer investment of over €3 million between 2014 and 2016.

Local authorities and approved housing bodies, AHBs, are also actively engaging in partnerships with private developers to deliver turnkey projects which are making an important contribution to meeting social housing need. To date, nine local authorities are engaged in 24 such contracts around the country and more such projects are possible for Tipperary or other local authorities where the housing units are suitable for social housing in these areas.

Other programmes through which we are working with Tipperary and other local authorities to meet the needs of those on the housing waiting list include the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, the housing assistance payment, HAP, and various leasing arrangements under the Department's social housing current expenditure programme. This blended delivery approach ensures that a range of delivery mechanisms are available to be used, as appropriate, in a manner that takes account of the housing market and housing need in specific areas. I accept the Deputy's frustration at the pace of delivery of some of the construction projects but I think there is a lot moving in Tipperary.

There is nothing moving. The Minister will be moving pretty hastily in a couple of months' time looking for votes from the council members. I have the figures. For years, houses were built in their hundreds, or 150, in Tipperary. I have the statistics here. Nothing has been built in the past couple of years.

I will name them.

Please do. I cannot see them. I have asked the Minister to call in the county manager to explain what is going on. The National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, offered the Department houses. The council gave me the range of reasons it had to reject properties offered by NAMA, through the Government housing agency and its mediator. When I put the question to NAMA it insisted that it was made quite clear to all agencies that any property handed over by NAMA to a housing agency would be fully remediated to the highest living standards and would be in full compliance with all construction and building standards. Who is codding who? NAMA also said that it was clear prior to hand over that any issues relating to legal title or financial matters would be sorted out. We are being fooled, going from NAMA to the housing agencies to the county councils back to the Minister and I know how hard he is working but it is not happening. If the Minister has leadership ambitions, and I wish him all the best, he will have to do better than this.

Does the Minister wish to tell the Deputy all that has been done in Tipperary?

I have been through some of the programmes. Significant amounts of housing have been brought back into use through repairs. There has been quite a significant acquisition programme in Tipperary. It is true that only six units were completed there.

I can give the Deputy the names of those. There are a further 13 local authority construction schemes in the pipeline which will deliver 129 units when completed, two in Thurles, Cloughjordan, Cashel, Clonmel, Borrisoleigh, Templetuohy, Roscrea, Newport, Carrick-on-Suir and Knockanrawley. I can go through these afterwards with the Deputy if he wants. I accept the impatience to get these projects built faster but there is no shortage of funding available from the Department for these projects. We are putting in tens of millions of euro. We have the projects in the pipeline and the pressure is on the local authority to deliver.

They have not been delivered. The council says it does not have the money. The Minister is advancing money all the time. How many new schemes has the Department approved since June of last year? The figures show that only three were built in the first three quarters of the year and none in the final quarter.

There are several blockages and too much of a delay. People only want a respectable house. Planners will not allow people who have the money and the site to build. It is a dog in the manger job. We need houses not reports. Money is announced and re-announced and re-hashed. The Minister should visit. We will take him on a tour from Cloughjordan to Clonmel, to Carrick-on-Suir, Cashel and Thurles and all the rural villages. I will show him all the voids, the empty houses that have not been refurbished. It is not happening. The county councils are saying they do not have the money, the Minister says he is smothering with money. Who is codding who? Homeless people are frustrated.

I am involved in voluntary housing and we build more houses than the Minister would build in five years and we are only a few lay people. There is no expert among us. The Minister has all the experts and nothing is happening. It beggars belief. I am on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government and I know all about the reports. We want houses to house our people who want to pay rent, not reports and announcements of money being regurgitated. It was the same with the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Kelly, who nearly smothered us with announcements but with nothing to show for them.

Let me give the Deputy some statistics. On 17 February-----

It is houses we want. A person cannot live in a statistic.

The Deputy said there was no money being made available.

The county council is saying it.

I do not care what it is telling him. He should let me give him the facts.

The Minister should call in the county manager.

On 17 February, over €4 million was approved for 25 social houses in Knockanrawley. On the same day, over €4 million was approved for Mill Road in Thurles; almost €1.5 million in Newport and over €100,000 for Treacy Park in Carrick-on-Suir. On one day, which was only a few days ago, €10 million was made available for schemes that the Deputy says councils cannot get funding for.

I am not aware of a single scheme in the country that has been refused funding where a local authority has looked for it since I came into office.

The Minister should call in the managers.

Money is available. If there are blockages, we need to solve them. That is why we have a housing delivery office-----

It is completely blocked.

The Deputy said a few minutes ago that funding was the problem. I am telling him it is not.

What is the problem? The Minister has to get them to spend it.

Rent Controls

Catherine Murphy

Question:

5. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he will include Maynooth as a designated rent pressure zone in view of the fact that Maynooth has the same average rents and the exact same percentage increase on the average national rent as Leixlip and Celbridge; his views on the fact that commuter towns in County Kildare face every bit as much pressure as Dublin city centre and the rents are comparable levels; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9031/17]

Maynooth is the focus of this question but it could apply equally to several locations in north Kildare, Kildare or other parts of the country. It is under the same pressure and has the same rent profile as Leixlip and Celbridge, for example, both of which are included. The fall-out from it has been almost immediate. It is as though landlords take it as almost a requirement to get their rents up to the average in the area if they are below that and there certainly are people under pressure to move out of their houses.

My immediate response is that it would be a very foolish landlord who started to put up rents significantly in a town like Maynooth because that will guarantee that it will come under the rent pressure zone designations. It would be very counterproductive if the landlords' concern is the ability to increase rent.

On 24 January 2017, in accordance with section 24A of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, as amended, the Housing Agency proposed that 15 local electoral areas should be considered for designation as rent pressure zones. On foot of the proposal from the Housing Agency, again in accordance with the Act, I requested the Director of the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, to make a report to me as to whether these areas met the criteria for designation as rent pressure zones. On 26 January 2017, I received a report from the RTB confirming that 12 out of the 15 local electoral areas examined met the criteria and I made orders designating those 12 areas as rent pressure zones on 26 January 2017. The areas designated included the local electoral areas of Naas, Celbridge-Leixlip and Kildare-Newbridge.

For an area to be designated a rent pressure zone, it must satisfy the criteria set out in section 24A(4) of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 (as amended): (i) the annual rate of rent inflation in the area must have been 7% or more in four of the last six quarters; and (ii) the average rent in the area in the last quarter must be above the average national rent in the last quarter.

In terms of the local electoral area of Maynooth, the report received from the RTB indicated that while the average rent in the area was above the average national rent for the quarter, the annual rate of rent inflation in the area was greater than 7% in only three of the last six quarters. The requirement for designation is for the annual rate of rent inflation in the area to be 7% or more in four of the last six quarters. Therefore Maynooth did not qualify under the criteria set out but may well do if rents continue to increase. We will keep these areas under consideration. Of all Deputies in this House, Deputy Murphy will appreciate more than most that we must make decisions when intervening in the property market on the basis of independent analysis and data and not politics. There was an argument on that before Christmas.

I will rely on the independent data that is gathered by the RTB. We will make decisions accordingly.

If the Minister asks his party colleague from the Kildare North constituency about his experience of people raising the issues in the rental sector in Maynooth - I assume they are not all coming to me - he will confirm that the reality in the town is as I have described. The new arrangements are having the effect I would have predicted. The process used to select specific areas is flawed. My party argued that rent increases should be linked to the consumer price index. Under section 139 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, landlords are supposed to give notification of rent increases. There is no evidence that this is being universally done. In fact, a reply I received from the RTB suggested that updates are not provided in many cases. As Maynooth is a university town, large cohorts of renters come on stream in particular cycles. The Maynooth electoral area is quite large and has a significant rural hinterland and this has an impact on the profile of the town for these purposes. I am sure this is also the case in other areas.

The presence of people working for multinationals is also adding to the pressures in Maynooth. When people are paying rents that are not as high as the market rate in the area, the immediate reaction is to give people notice of significant rent increases to bring them up to the market level. I will pass the details of such cases to the Minister.

It would not have made any difference in this case if we had decided to link the limitations on rent increases in rent pressure zones to the consumer price index, rather than setting a 4% limit as we have done. When we were drawing up the criteria to be used to determine whether an area would qualify to be designated as a rent pressure zone, we moved away from the process of assessing on the basis of local authority areas because that was far too broad. We were aware that the use of local authority areas would have an unfair impact on towns, as it would lead to rural areas bringing down the averages. For that reason, we tried to find a much more granular, targeted and localised way of assessing rents in certain areas. We decided that the only way this could be done was by using local electoral areas. I do not doubt that people in Navan, Maynooth, Greystones and Drogheda feel that those towns should be rent pressure zones. They would like them to be designated as such. Tenants in certain areas like to know that their landlords cannot increase their rents by more than 4% per annum. I have to make decisions on the basis of the data and the criteria we set out in the legislation. We decided on those criteria for a reason.

When we are designating an area as a rent pressure zone, we need to know that there has been a sustained and unaffordable level of rental inflation over a period and that the rents in the area are very high by comparison with the national average. If there is a sustained problem in Maynooth, it is likely to qualify at some stage in the not too distant future.

The problem is that areas like Maynooth will qualify after people have been forced out by means of tenancy cessations or rent increases. There is plenty of immediate evidence that this is happening. We argued that this restriction should be nationally applied and should not be based on rent pressure zones. We disagreed with some aspects of the Minister's approach when it was introduced, but now we are talking about how it is actually playing out. I am mentioning an area I am very familiar with in that context. The problem is that people in towns like Maynooth, Navan and Greystones, which are currently missing out, will have to be put under levels of pressure that have very negative effects on them in order for those towns to qualify for these purposes in the future.

Buíochas leat, a Theachta.

I will send the Minister evidence of the kind of pressure we are seeing.

I do not think Maynooth is the same as some of the other towns because it is a university town. As it is the only town with a university in it, a one-size-fits-all approach should not apply.

The application of these restrictions across the board nationally would have had extraordinary effects in some parts of the country where the provision of rental accommodation is not viable as a result of significant falls in property prices and rental values in recent years. One of those effects would essentially have been to put a ceiling on those very low values. This would have prevented investment in many towns across the country. I think that would have been massively counterproductive. Instead, we wanted to target areas where we knew there was a significant problem and where the level of demand was driving rents up to crazy and unaffordable levels. That is why we chose the rent pressure zone model. I understand that a similar approach is being taken in Scotland, which has a similar profile to Ireland in this respect. I remind the House that if there are incidents happening, there are pretty strong protections, enforced and monitored by the RTB, for tenants outside the rent pressure zone regulations or restrictions. A landlord cannot simply evict somebody.

There must be legal grounds for eviction. There are now extended notice periods in these circumstances. The legislation we introduced recently strengthened the security of tenure provisions.

It is now six years rather than four years. If landlords are abusing that, we need to hear about it and the RTB needs to hear about it. For the record-----

-----there has been a significant increase in the number of complaints that have come to the RTB since the introduction of the rent pressure zones. As a result of the profile of that debate, I think both landlords and tenants have a better understanding of their own rights. I think that is a good thing.

I realise every time I sit in this Chair that many Deputies on both sides of the House need to have hearing tests. We are already running over time. I remind Deputies that when they fail to confine their contributions to the time slots that are laid down, some of their colleagues' questions are not answered. I think it is highly unfair. I ask everybody to try to adhere to their time slots and to conclude when I advise them that their time is up.

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