One of the State's largest counties has only a single rental property on its local authority landlords' register, the Dáil was told yesterday.
It was a "joke", said the Minister of State for Housing, Mr Noel Ahern, who condemned some local authorities as "pathetic" in their delivery of housing and in registering landlords.
Landlords are required to register rental properties with their local authority at €70 for each unit, and it would potentially be a "huge revenue source", said the Minister.
But, highlighting their lack of action, he pointed out that while some authorities had a "reasonable number of houses" registered, "one large county, which I will not name, has only one registered let house. This is a joke."
The Minister was winding up the second stage debate on the "flagship" Residential Tenancies Bill, which reforms the private rented sector and aims for a balance of rights between landlord and tenant. It includes security of tenure for four years for tenants with six months' continuous tenancy.
Mr Ahern said he could not understand why local authorities had not pursued landlords to register their properties for rent. He was a local authority member when it was first introduced, and saw it has a "huge revenue source for the local authority". But "it has not become that, because local authorities - for whatever reason - did not see the benefit of chasing landlords for what was then the £40 per unit".
Authorities "have failed to impose the standard and they have failed to bring in the revenue. That is difficult to understand." He warned landlords of the penalty for non-registration. If a landlord "is convicted of the offence of not complying with a requirement to register, the penalty will be a fine of up to €3,000 or six months' imprisonment".
Mr Bernard Durkan (FG, Kildare North) said he rejected "the assertion that tenancy is the answer to our housing problems. Tenancy gives more power to Big Brother because the tenant must always be on the move."
But Mr John Dennehy (FF, Cork South-Central) said there was "some snobbery involved" in the attitude to rental accommodation. There was a view that if "you don't own your own house, you are not of equal status to others. This is rubbish."
Mr Martin Ferris (SF, Kerry North) hit out at the changes in rent allowances in the Estimates and said it would "force people to criminalise themselves", so as to obtain accommodation. They would have to falsify documents, with the aid of landlords to say they were paying less then €107 a week for their accommodation.
The Bill now goes to committee stage.
