Garden shed-sits housing proposal
Deputy Murphy attacked a proposed housing approach he said was driven by corporate interests and would create insecure shed-sits for tenants. The Taoiseach rejected that framing, said it is about supply, and argued the Deputy opposes nearly every housing measure.
I want to ask about corporate capture of the Government, enabling landlords to build shed-sits with no planning permission, to rent them out with no legal protections, to evict tenants at any time with no right of appeal, no reason and no basis to go to the RTB. Where did this dystopian idea come from? A corporate think-tank set up by the billionaire Collison brothers. Plugging the idea two years ago, Progress Ireland boasted that there could be 350,000 such shed-sits, and it said they could be built based on whether rents were high enough to justify building one. This always had landlords' greasy fingers all over it but the Minister of State, Deputy John Cummins, claimed that it would only be for family members. He still has a video up on Facebook saying it would give younger people and older people the option to live independently of the family home while retaining support of the family network. He told RTÉ he did not see it as a rental measure. Will the Taoiseach go along with this creation of a second class of renters or will he stop this corporate capture?
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The Deputy loves creating a narrative about every initiative of Government. It is nothing to do with Progress Ireland or anything like that but it is to do with supply. I will be straight-up.
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It is its idea.
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It is its idea.
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Deputies all over this House were advocating for this long before Progress Ireland was ever established. There have been cases in rural Ireland where people have had difficulties with extensions and buildings in their back gardens, fields, or whatever they were attached to, including farmhouses and so on. There is a balance here. The Deputy has opposed every single measure to do with supply of housing that we have introduced. You name it. It includes any of the housing Acts, and everything else. I do not know what Deputy Murphy's agenda is, ultimately. I am not saying this is perfect but it is needed. It can be for family members and will be useful for family members but family members will not be staying forever in a unit out in the back. They will want to move on as well. These are not sheds, by the way.