2026-02-18

I am glad to get the opportunity to raise this problem at the Topical Issue forum today. I hope the Minister will take it seriously. I do not want to be laughed at like I was last week when I asked a question here. This is serious business for anyone who does not have a home and is trying to find a property to rent. In many instances, they can be hit with a traumatic event that they were never ready for. Since the Residential Tenancies Bill was mooted last year along with the idea that people would have to rent out houses for six years, many people have decided to get out. Hundreds of people have been to my office after getting a notice to quit and finding themselves with nowhere to go. One fellow came to me out of the back of a transit van, which is where he is staying. I have dealt with a lady with two young children – in fact, I have dealt with several such cases - bawling crying every Saturday in Killarney. A number of them are in to me constantly. The tenant in situ scheme would be a great scheme if it was working properly, but Kerry County Council says it cannot buy houses with the tenants in them because it is not being funded by the Department for any repairs or works that would be needed for it to buy the house. This is wrong as Kerry County Council could rent it back to the tenants at local authority rent prices and perhaps later sell it to the tenants when they get on their feet. All of us elected to this Chamber support the tenant in situ scheme to allow families to continue renting. As I said, if the tenants get on their feet, they could end up buying out the council. Will the Minister look at this scheme and sort it out, especially in Kerry? I do not know whether it is happening in other places. There are many vacant houses in our county. I gave the example previously of there being 54 between Kenmare and Kilgarvan, and within six or seven miles of Killarney town. People could step onto the TFI bus between Kenmare and Killarney, which passes every hour. It is a crying shame that so many of these are vacant when people are looking for houses. Will the Government dedicate a team to go around to see what would help people or incentivise them to rent the houses? The biggest problem is the fear people have that they will not be able to get the house back if they rent it out. There is a scheme for Ukrainians where €600 is paid by the State to the landlord tax free. The most important thing there is that if the landlord wants the house back, in that instance, they can get it within four weeks, not months and years as happens in many other cases. That has turned many landlords off because they cannot get their houses back when they want them. I will give an example. A man bought a house in Killarney but could not come back from Australia for 12 months. Someone begged him to rent it to them and he did so but when he came back from Australia after the 12 months, he could not get into his house for three years. Those are the blockages that need to be removed to ensure people rent out these vacant houses. There are many of them around the country. I ask the Government to deal with that.

I thank the Deputy. Fair play to him for advocating, especially on behalf of those who are coming in to him in desperation and looking for a house to rent. I understand the frustration. We all have it in our constituencies. I will try to outline what the Government is trying to do to free up rental accommodation. Ireland's new housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, is a wide-ranging action plan focused on housing supply and targeting homelessness. The plan contains a suite of actions that will increase the supply of much-needed rental accommodation, by keeping existing landlords in the market and attracting new landlords, while ensuring strong and balanced tenancy protections for tenants and landlords. The Government is establishing a more robust legal and policy framework to support increased investment in the rental market, to increase the choice for renters and, over time, reduce market rents. The Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026 is currently passing through the Houses of the Oireachtas. To support an increase in available rental accommodation, the Government has also brought forward key measures, including a revised national planning framework enabling the zoning of significantly more land, and the revision of design standards for apartments. These measures, along with a reduced VAT rate of 9% on apartments announced as part of budget 2026, are focused on unlocking the delivery of apartments that is key to increasing the supply of rental properties. The Government is also continuing the development of cost rental as a new tenure type, which means providing homes to tenants at least 25% below market rent by providing significant levels of funding support to the Land Development Agency, LDA, approved housing bodies, AHBs, and local authorities. While it has been asserted that landlords are leaving the rental market, the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, director's report shows that while 5,405 notices of termination were received by the RTB in quarter 3 of 2025, 18,425 new tenancy registrations were also confirmed for the same period. This figure serves to highlight the consistent churn within the rental market. The Deputy suggests using the tenant in situ scheme to address the scarcity of rental accommodation. The tenant in situ scheme, as has been referred to, is an acquisitions programme specifically in respect of those who are at risk of homelessness and already qualify for social housing support such as the housing assistance payment, HAP. The Deputy has outlined many of those situations. Some €375 million was provided last year for local authority acquisitions. It is an emergency measure and should only be used by local authorities as a last resort when all other options to prevent homelessness have been exhausted. Our focus must be on constructing new social homes but I note that significant funding will be provided through our acquisition programme of second-hand homes for those at risk of homelessness, again under the 2026 programme, as a response to short-term pressures, affording local authorities the flexibility needed to respond while they scale up their construction programmes. The Deputy also suggested the vacant property refurbishment grant could be used to address the scarcity of rental accommodation. This scheme provides a grant of up to €50,000 for the refurbishment of homes that have been vacant for at least two years and up to €70,000 where it is a derelict property. It is available in respect of homes for occupation as a principal private residence and properties that would be made available for rent. It, therefore, increases the supply of homes available to rent and it could address the issue of the plethora of vacant houses the Deputy referred to. In providing a grant to support the refurbishment of vacant and derelict properties, individual landlords, who without the support of the grant would not be able renovate and turn these disused properties into homes for rent, are being incentivised. It has become a vital affordable support, particularly in more rural areas where supply of new housing is not readily available. It is also supporting the regeneration of towns and villages and areas of our cities, as well as supporting environmental objectives. I look forward to hearing more of what the Deputy has to say about this issue.

I ask again about the tenant in situ scheme. The Minister of State said money has been allocated to it. Will he talk to Kerry County Council to see what is wrong and why it cannot operate the tenant in situ scheme? Elected members in Kerry have been asking the local authority to buy land banks to build local authority houses in small villages, such as Scotia's Glen, Gneeveguilla, Firies, Curragh, Currans and all these places. I hear the council is slow to buy these land banks because it will be hit with the residential zoned land tax. Is that right? That is serious. Where is the proposal to allow granny flats to be built behind residential properties? It was mooted about 12 months ago but nothing has happened since. Where is the proposal on modular homes? I do not see them materialising in Kerry. It was to be a faster way of delivering housing. The problem, which I raise here continually, is that many people in Kerry cannot build a house of their own because they cannot get planning permission. Who is dealing with that? Is it going to be sorted out? It is time it was. God damn it but if these people go to the expense of trying to build houses for themselves, surely the smallest bit of help we could give them is to give them a fair crack at getting planning permission. This urban regeneration clause is causing severe difficulty far from towns where people who never lived in a town are being denied the right to build houses. Will the Minister of State please do something about those things?

The proposal on modular homes or small units in back gardens or on the premises of existing homes will come forward shortly. It is really important. It will be an exemption for a certain size of dwelling to allow young people in particular, who want to start off with a home, to build with an exemption so they do not have to go through the arduous planning process. As a west Cork TD, I completely agree with the Deputy about the challenges young people are facing in getting planning permission to build on their land. They have to go through obstacles and barriers and it causes them frustration and headaches and in many cases they are not successful. That has to change. In the next while, we will bring forward the national planning statement, which I hope will address many of those issues. I will address another issue that has been topical in recent weeks. The Deputy spoke about the number of vacant homes and properties not in use throughout the year. The whole aim of the short-term letting legislation, which is being brought in and which has been controversial - and I can see why - is to try to bring more property into rental accommodation. The constituents the Deputy has coming into his office and I have coming into my office are struggling to get rental accommodation because they go onto daft.ie or these rental sites and there is nothing to rent. The whole idea is that we get some of these houses back into the rental market and that will release a pressure valve. The Deputy is from Kerry and I am from west Cork; we rely on tourism and on tourism accommodation. It is important we have these short-term lets available for the tourism sector. There is no doubt about that. Someone recently referenced a figure to me that in the region of 6,000 units were available for short-term lets in the west Cork area. If we could even get about 200 of them back into the rental market, imagine the pressure that would take off? I understand the need for short-term letting. I understand people have been doing this for years and we have to clarify the planning requirements but this provides an opportunity to allow people to rent long term, which is a big issue is places like Kerry and west Cork.

The short-term places are not what I am talking about at all. It is the houses that are vacant and have nobody in them-----

You are talking about lack of rental accommodation though.

Deputies, we need to move on to the next matter.