Property Services (Advertisement of Unfit Lettings) (Amendment) Bill 2019

GGTrek

Another nanny state bill coming from the usual SF:
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2019-04-10/30/


I just let the loony senator words speak for themselves:
"Section 2 proposes the insertion of a new section 56A into the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011. It deals with allowing the Property Services Regulatory Authority, PSRA, to issue directions to online platforms and letting agents to remove advertisements that breach current minimum standard regulations within a seven-day period. It also allows for members of the public to report advertisements to the PSRA [anonymously?:eek:]. Although, the minimum standards regulations are a robust series of measures, breaches are not always obvious from photographs and a threshold of evidence would be required. Subsection (5) would grant the PSRA powers to investigate and consult with advertisers to determine the threshold that may be needed in a manner similar to the code of conduct governing letting agents. Letting agents in our towns and villages do not advertise in their shop windows properties that do not meet minimum standards. I met the PSRA on this matter and I concede that the Bill may need more clarity. I will table amendments on Committee Stage to achieve that clarity [maybe:D]. I will also seek amendments on Committee Stage to deal with instances where the PSRA receives a complaint regarding a property that requires physical investigation. In such cases, it should be able to request the relevant local authority to carry out the inspection on its behalf.
Ultimately, the Bill allows the Minister to set the operation of this legislation. It can only be commenced if he and his Department are ready to go.
Although the PSRA does not currently have a remit to regulate online platforms, no other State body does either. Given its experience in working with letting agents in this regard, it is best placed to achieve an effective response to this problem.
I wish to confirm that social media is included in this legislation and that persons may refer a social media ad to the PSRA in the same manner as a rental ad on any other platform."


Coming out of SF it has probably got little chance to become law, but it falls very much into the type of bill that wants to regulate speech online by putting the burden on the platform with no recourse for the person publishing. It will cause delays in publishing ads, the ads will cost much more, they will probably disappear from social media (since it costs money to regulate) and perfectly permissible ads will be removed without any way to control this. It is already happening with speech in platforms like youtube, facebook and twitter. Censorship and anonymous reports have always been very dear to the extreme left wing and right wing parties who love to censor.


There is a disgruntled tenant (probably unemployed since he/she has so much time, he/she says that he/she was evicted and now has to pay more money in rent:D) that every day (anonymously of course) performs the job the loony senator would like the PRSA to perform: https://twitter.com/rentalproperty8?lang=en
Obviously this person anti-LL agenda is pouring out of every post and some of the ads he/she is pointing out are actually pretty good accommodation (his planning searches are a joke, since planning law is so complicated due to strong possibility of planning exemptions that only a local authority has the skills to investigate, definitely not a loony on twitter) but imagine what would happen if this bill became law: photos would disappear from ads since the regulations are so detailed that the vast majority of houses in Ireland would fail (especially w.r.t. the new ventilation requirements).

Who would pay for all the additional costs of advertising caused by these regulations in a market with very scarce rental supply?

Would this regulation improve or reduce supply?

There are also a lot of legal issues with the bill (as usual when an ideological bill like this one is presented), so the government proposed this amendment:
"To delete all words after “That” and substitute the following: "the Bill be read a second time this day six months, for the following reasons:
- to explore further the extent to which the underlying issue the Bill seeks to address is already addressed, or capable of being addressed, under housing legislation;
- to allow for further consideration of associated issues with the Bill, in particular those related to the impact on and compliance with EU law (eCommerce Directive and possibly the Services Directive) and other elements which appear legally problematical.""

The minister for housing actually raised all the legal problems of this bill here:
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/seanad/2019-04-10/speech/347/

and the government amendmend above was passed, so any further legislative action on the bill is suspended for 6 months.