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Martin Ferris.
KERRY Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris has called on his constituency colleagues to support his party’s Rent Certainty Bill which will be voted on in the Dáil tomorrow.
Fianna Fáil has signalled that it will vote with Fine Gael and government Independents to reject rent certainty which, he says, will condemn more renters to homelessness.
It comes at a time when there has been a five per cent rise in the cost of rent in Kerry in the past year.
According to figures from the Residential Tenancies Board, the average monthly rent in Kerry in the first quarter of this year was €572, up €29.50 on the same period last year. The average rent in Tralee stands at €577.26.
“The Sinn Féin Bill seeks to link rents to the consumer price index as a way of preventing extortionate increases in private rents which are forcing families into homelessness every day,” said Deputy Ferris.
“The government’s response to this has been to stall and wait for a committee report due out at the end of this week.But the reality is that the recommendations of that report will take at least six months to be implemented.
“That is simply not good enough when we are in the middle of a crisis which is seeing people made homeless every day. There is hardly a day goes by that my constituency offices are not contacted by people who are about to become, or are in fact ,homeless. We need action now. That is why I am appealing to my constituency colleagues to vote in support of the Sinn Féin Bill tomorrow and to lobby their party leadership to see the logic in that position,” said Deputy Ferris.
This issue is not rocket science?
It is wrong that public tax payers are paying more of their fiscal resources to private landlords (part of the social elite) via rent allowance to aid them on their previous errors in the Celtic tiger game of monopoly!
Even worse is that this process shifts wealth from the ordinary citizens and empowers the social elites which aids and assists their revenues to further corrupt the system of society via political lobbying!
The one correct long term solution is for Kerry County Council to build with the correct planning, the correct type of social housing in correct way in the correct locations and create jobs which supports job creation the wider economy and the whole of society and even more important Kerry County Council would collect the rents which would pay back the public tax payers and expand their revenue base for a more fair, equal and secure future.
This issue is social science for dummies?