Mattie McGrath Urges Balance in Housing Bill, Warns of Rush

Oireachta Dail Eireann, I want to wish Minister O'Brien the very best, I know how hard he worked in the Housing Department, in the Housing Committee, I know he has some great ideas and I hope that his department officials will work with him now and allow him to bring those ideas to fruition, obviously I mean I wish there was a utopia that people of the left here and Deputy Hilly Ray, Mike Liddy Ray alluded to it, that you know that all landlords are demons, all landlords are evil and bad and they pluck this property or it lands into the sky and they make maximum profits and pay no tax and mistreat their tenants, nothing can be further from the truth and we need a balance, we need a healthy balance of people who are willing to invest and who are willing to buy properties and put them out for rent and look after their tenants and we need good tenants as well and there are thousands of both and that's very important to put that on the record but we need legislation and I welcome this legislation today, as I said I supported the introduction of the freeze on the evictions in March when the emergency came in, I certainly supported that, I am content, have been content that many of the commercial aspects of this, not here today in this bill but commercial properties, that the evictions didn't, that the hassle didn't stop and the evictions didn't stop there and the court procedures didn't stop there the intimidation of the intimidation of people and evictions of families because they were in commercial stroke properties or commercial loans got in trouble, that has happened here in the city in Dublin and elsewhere and that is a very regressive step. there's always going to be people who abused the good intention of this and the good will and this bill as well and we have situations, our landlords have been tormented by tenants causing huge levels of anti-social behaviour, towing parties, drug dealing, tormenting and abusing the neighbours and indeed theft. we've seen this and we've seen huge parties with young people and I always am a supporter of young people and I have young people in my family myself and Muna Noegi are a chukki sheet but we had some instances in Cork where a solicitor and another neighbour had to go to court to stop these parties going on. So I mean that's not fair, as I said the neighbours have been subjected to abhorning treatment, the landlords trying to deal with the issue by removing the tenant, the Garde have been involved and recommended eviction but the landlord my hands were tied and they couldn't do anything about it. So I mean those situations are incolourable too and we must address those as well so they have to be balanced and fair play. As I said the tenants are putting everybody and giving two fingers to everybody and nothing can be done with them because of this moratorium and because of this so-called Covid pandemic. And as I said other examples of the landlord whose tenants have quite simply stopped paying rent, just stopped paying rent, took abuse of, abused the situation that's there. And as a minority I accept that and maybe a tiny minority but a very heinous minority when it comes to people. The landlord must pay his commitments, must pay his own debts and pay his taxes and everything else. Tenants have continued to refuse to pay their rent and have refused to vacate the property. Tenants have suffered no loss of income due to the pandemic in those cases. And where the people have suffered the loss I'm talking about here today of income and wages and everything else, they must be supported. And this bill, it's probably weak in its way as Minister, it's like all the legislation we have here in this present climate, it's too rushed. And we haven't pre-legislative scrutiny, we haven't proper time to debate it and we haven't, we haven't, and rushed legislation often can lead to be bad legislation. And I'm appealing to you Minister, look, to use your common sense, which you have plenty of it, use your experience here as well. And, you know, it's very hard to make legislation that I know that covers every aspect of every situation. But we need to protect and support decent tenants, and as I said, the vast majority of them. We need to protect also and support good landlords, because without them the housing crisis would be far worse. Without them the building programme in the last 10 years wasn't non-existent from the state, so we would have nothing. But we need the balance of the two, and two roads, I suppose, shall turn right or turn left or whatever. But we need that good, solid legislation that protects the tenants, good tenants, and supports landlords as well. So, Minister, I wish you well, I work with you. The problem with this is we break, as you know, on Thursday, and if there are any things that crop up, we'll have no opportunity to address them until the autumn. And that's a long time to wait. As the whole delay in people that were in the process of evicting rogue landlords has been stuck in the mud since March, and now going to be stuck until December or early January again, so that's not good. So, Minister, I, as I said, welcome it. There's good aspects that I want to support, there's bits that I can't support. But look, in the overall, I think it's an effort by you to bring your stamp to your department. I know it's rushed because of the situation we're in, but look, I wish you a look on it, and I want to support you and say that when I see legislation, that's for the greater good, for the greater number of people. That's what we want, and we want to go forward in that vein always. Gormach gud, kayol. Gormach gud. Gormach gud.