Healthy Homes Bill 2019

GGTrek

Another anti landlord Bill that was introduced in February hidden behind environmental concerns and a beautiful very newspeak name like "Healthy Homes".

https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2019/11/eng/initiated/b1119d.pdf


https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2019-02-06/19/


"The Green Party's Healthy Homes Bill 2019 is vital step to ensure homes are safer and warmer for those who rent. The Bill proposes to require the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government to make regulations to require private landlords to test their properties for the presence of radon and remediate them if necessary. It proposes also to require the Minister to make regulations to impose thermal comfort and efficiency standards such as a minimum building energy rating. Currently, there is no obligation on landlords to take either of these steps, and as the measures only benefit the tenant, there is little incentive for them to undertake the work either."


Instead of incentivizing thermal efficiency through grant schemes, the green socialists of the Green Party want to force it (only on landlords of course, otherwise if they try to coerce it on owner occupiers their electoral base might be substantially reduced!) In addition they also want a massive blanket radon testing at the landlords expense of course regardless of where the house is located and the likelyhood of the location being at radon gas risk.
http://www.epa.ie/radiation/radonmap/


The question is: are these TDs stupid or are they just trying to virtue signal to get more votes? They live in la la land of course, since with a massive rent supply crisis, they create other regulatory expenses (could be massive depending on implementation) to the suppliers while at the same time keeping rent controls (where expenses cannot be recovered by increasing rent)? They beauty is that in the bill they want to exclude state bodies (i.e. councils?) from these regulations (where they show they really are anti landlord jokers )



I shall keep posting to this forum all the stupid legislative proposals affecting the housing market from the jokers at the Oireachtas and the destabilizing effect they have on the private rental market. In my opinion nowadays a landlord main enemy is the Oireachtas, so it is fundamental to monitor the activities of these jokers and react before the bills are actually passed into law. It is crazy, but the lack of a serious and aggressive landlord lobbying group is causing the slow death of the private rental sector in Ireland.

gctest50

Grant schemes sometimes just cause the price of a job to go up
Nothing wrong with a bit of radon testing, get excessively irradiated isn't on.

What ever about that, what does need to happen is serious incentives to landlords for Long-term unfurnished rentals

Long-term ? about 10 years

Unfurnished ? get a kitchen sink, bathroom, heating system n floorcovering

DubCount

I never understand the need to impose standards for rental properties that exceed the standards for owner occupiers. For example, the presence of Radon is clearly a bad thing, but if you want to eliminate it, then introduce a requirement to test and remedy for all properties. Why do our politicians think that tenants are more impacted by Radon than owner occupiers?

Sleepy

I really don't see why the government can't copy the successful UK scheme on improving Thermal Efficiency by removing VAT (or even subsidising) the cost of materials.

Insulating an attic costs a few hundred quid if you go the DIY route. It's nearer to 4 figures if you're paying to get it done rendering the SEAI grant useless. Reduce the cost of the materials and installers will have a far harder time profiting from any grants (as customers can far more easily compare the cost of doing it themselves vs paying someone to do it) and, better still, there'll be an increase in DIY'ers carrying out improvements to their homes as it's cheaper to do so.