Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2020-07-31 ============================================================ Victor Boyhan (IND), Agricultural Panel I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke. He has a very difficult task. I am particularly interested in local government. For the past four years I sat on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government and I would like to sit on it again. There is a lot more work to do. Fine Gael has been in government for nine years and with no disrespect to the Minister of State, I am quite tired of people coming in here talking about a programme for Government. My colleague, friend and Senator on my right speaks about his involvement in the Residential Tenancies Board and makes a very eloquent case to support all of these amendments, if the Minister of State were to take them on board. I took the trouble of checking the membership of the Residential Tenancies Board before I came into the Chamber. This is the Residential Tenancies Board of which one of our colleagues in the House is a member. The board states: "No one can be made to leave their accommodation (other than in limited and exceptional circumstances where a breach of tenant obligations takes place and an RTB Determination Order is sourced through the dispute resolution process)." That is a good start. That is something I think everyone would agree with. I do not see why anyone could vote against the Bill. I am somewhat amazed by the backlash or resistance to these amendments. I thank the Labour Party, Sinn Féin and the Civil Engagement Group for going to the trouble of preparing 40 amendments. From inquiries I made before coming in here, I understand that the Government is not going to accept any of them. Perhaps the Minister of State has not told the House that yet, but that is my understanding. If that is the case, it is an absolute disgrace that people could come into this House and nod their heads as if it were all very enlightened and interesting but the Minister of State has already signed up to reject the amendments. I had not even spoken when I heard that all the amendments would be rejected. What does that say about our Parliament and our democratic process? I hope and appeal to the Greens here today, with their track record on this issue, to at least support some of the amendments, or if they have a real difficulty at least to abstain, because we cannot have them talking out of both sides of their mouth. Let us consider the Rebuilding Ireland document. It was introduced to the House by the then Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Simon Coveney. He said no one would be in a hotel within a few months. I spoke to six people today who are in emergency accommodation in a hotel. Then he asked the committee to give him another few months, and then a few months after that he ran out of the Department and he did not achieve what he set out to achieve. We have not heard too much from him yet about housing. One could ask the reason for the tenancy problem. It is because we have a shortage of good, public housing. Everybody should be allowed rent in good public housing and it should be managed according to the principles of the RTB. I say to the Senators here today that they should push their amendments. Let the Government Members come to vote. A simple majority is all that is required. Half of them have more than likely left the House. If they have gone, perhaps they will turn back from Kerry, Cork and Donegal to vote. How many Senators are tenants and landlords? How many people are up to date in terms of their declarations? I presume they all are. There are no journalists here, but I say to them that they should dig and find out who are the landlords who are Deputies, Senators or Ministers and why is there resistance to bringing in some decent protections for people. I spoke to a man and his partner yesterday who went to view accommodation and the first thing the landlord said is that it is a shared house so cash would be required. The second thing he said was that he did not want them in the house for more than three hours in the middle of the day because they live there too. Is that acceptable? Members can come in here in a few months' time and say that it is all awful. We should remember that Fianna Fáil was sitting on these benches in the Dáil six months ago. Let us remember what it told the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government about how he had failed and was not delivering. Fianna Fáil is in government a few weeks later and it is acquiescing. It is part of this old act. I say shame on those Members. How many of their daughters and sons are in unfit accommodation? How many people are forced to pay under-the-counter top-ups? Lots of people are. Members know it and I know it. I spoke the other day to a woman with three children who told me she was paying €2,500 for a flat in Bray but she had to get the last €500 from her mother because she has to make an under-the-counter payment. Do Members think that is good enough? I do not believe they do, but we now have an opportunity to bring in legislation to do something. I appeal to politicians with any sense of decency about tenants' rights to support some of these amendments. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2020-07-31/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2020-07-31