GE2016 Profile: Sen Kathryn Reilly (SF)

Name: Kathryn Reilly

Age: 27

Marital Status: In a relationship

Children: 0

Profession: Senator

Priorities:

Housing and homelessness is one of the dominant issues facing us. In Cavan, house prices have increased 18%, rent 10% and at one point there were 68 vacant houses, while over 1,000 were on housing waiting lists. Finding a home and shelter is currently laden with difficulties for private buyers, renters and those in need of State assistance.

We face social housing shortages; a crisis of homelessness; rising private property prices; increasing rents; shortages in emergency and specialty accommodation; burdensome mortgages; and a legacy of poor build quality and unsustainable planning.

The idea that the market will solve everything, the key pillar on which successive government policies have rested, has been shattered by the boom and subsequent bust.

To do this what is needed is: €2.2 billion additional capital spend for house builds. The introduction of legislation to empower the Central Bank to limit the interest rates that banks can charge.

Abolition of the Local Property Tax provision of rent certainty by index linking rent increases and decreases to the Consumer Price index.

Amendment of the Residential Tenancy Act to restrict the grounds on which landlords can serve notices to quit to provide greater security of tenure.