I dtús báire, ní aontaím leis an Teachta. Níl aon bhaint ag an méid atá ráite aici leis an bhfírinne. Níl suim ag an Teachta leis an bhfírinne, áfach. Is é atá i gceist ag an Teachta, agus Páirtí Shinn Féin, ná a bheith i gcoinne gach aon chinneadh a dhéanann an Rialtas, gan aon pholasaí soiléir dá chuid féin a chur os comhar an phobail. Is é sin bun agus barr an méid atá ráite ag an Teachta McDonald. Ní aontaím léi. Just because the Deputy keeps on saying untruths does not make them truth. The fundamental reality is that existing tenants will stay and their rents will be capped at 2%. That is clear. Any new tenancies after 1 March 2026, after this legislation, will be capped by the CPI. That is also very clear. The Deputy has sought to sow confusion. Of course, she condemned this over the weekend, before she even saw the detail of the plan. During the past couple of months, she declared RPZs would be eliminated. She did not expect this package of measures. There comes a stage when Deputy McDonald needs to start proposing solutions, because supply is the bottom line here. This is a balanced package of measures which protects existing tenants but gives policy certainty to them and to investment and investors, which is required to dramatically increase the supply of housing and apartments in the country, to get from 30,000 to 50,000 per annum for a sustained period of time. I see nothing in anything the Deputy has proposed that would go anywhere near trying to attempt to increase supply of apartments and supply of housing. I listened to her this morning and it was all bluff and bluster on "Morning Ireland".
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She is back to the vulture funds-----
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She then said this morning that if the Government is intent on using institutional funds, it is on the wrong track. Well, go back a few weeks and just replay what Deputy Eoin Ó Broin said on Virgin TV where he acknowledged-----
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-----and recognised a role for institutional funds in the Irish market.
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Who do I believe here? Do I believe Deputy McDonald this morning? Do I believe Deputy Ó Broin? Do they believe there is a role for institutional funds? Or, when it is into politics, they just change the term and call them "vulture funds", because it plays well, or they think it plays well.
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It is just clichéd bingo announcements. That is all they are at. I heard the Deputy this morning.
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It was just bluff and bluster. The bottom line here is-----
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I have answered the questions. If we look at what Threshold said, for example, it said it is very clear that "the changes announced today will - with well-designed legislation and effective enforcement – this will be a huge jump forward in providing long-term stability to renters." It welcomed the national extension of rent pressure zones. We will be bringing in legislation to deal with that specifically as quickly as we can. In the next week or two, I would like legislation before Government on the specific point of extending them, which is something Deputy McDonald should welcome and not just attack again and try to pick holes in something. It is a good measure and is something people called for.
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Threshold is saying that for the first time, private renters could have secure occupancy of their home for a set period, something that does not currently exist, and Deputies opposite are attacking all of this. They are making absolutely false assertions, because all they are interested in is the politics of this and how they can exploit the housing situation to get electoral or political gain for the party.
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They have no solutions and no proposals, in terms of the supply side of this.
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The Housing Agency provides the platform for the review that the Government has acted on. We have acted. We have taken decisions. I am not hanging around here. I am not interested in Deputy McDonald's bluff and bluster because it will contribute nothing to housing supply in this country. That is the bottom line. I did listen to Deputy McDonald this morning and she said to me it was back of the envelope stuff.
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What does Deputy McDonald say? She says Government wants to take the shackles off the big funds, which is a great sound bite. She says she has asked the Government to stop screwing things up. When asked about Sinn Féin's alternative plan, it is to enable the builders to just get out and build. What a fantastic plan. What a really detailed plan that is really going to get things going, is it not? Then, of course, she condemns the vultures and cuckoos but, meanwhile, Deputy Ó Broin will meet with them and will recognise the role of institutional investors in his attempts to be super-cerebral in discussing these issues. However, Deputy McDonald will come in and go on about cuckoos and vulture funds because it plays well to what she considers to be her base.
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She then finishes by saying, here is my solution. She says, "For the love of God, get the builders building. That is my plan."
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I thank the Deputy very much for raising this issue. It is a very serious and shocking situation. The revelations on "RTÉ Investigates", in particular, must have been deeply traumatic for families with loved ones in nursing homes generally but particularly in the two nursing homes that were covered by "RTÉ Investigates". It is particularly concerning that the regulatory authority did not capture or unearth this, particularly in one nursing home, in terms of its reviews. HIQA, when it was established, came out of Quality and Fairness, the health strategy in 2002. I was involved in it at the time, setting it up on an interim basis. Prior to that, we did not have a quality authority in health. It has done a lot of impactful and effective work over the years, but this is deeply concerning. There has to be a review by HIQA itself too, in terms of what went wrong here and in terms of not revealing what was subsequently revealed. I pay tribute to the "RTÉ Investigates" team on this. Methodologies may have to change in relation to inspection. Penalties also have to be reviewed in terms of either fines or, indeed, closure. Closure creates its own issues in respect of alternative locations but there have to be real consequences for horrific treatment of senior citizens in this manner. That is something I believe in. The family of Audeon Guy have spoken eloquently and very distressingly on their family situation and their acceptance of and belief in the impartiality of the HIQA reports as they checked the record of given homes following the inspection reports. On our overall system, there is the public service sector side of it in which we invested significantly in the last number of years but a lot of that investment was in modernising and refurbishing district hospitals which had been on a list for quite a long time in terms of the necessity for refurbishment. The HSE works with certain homes in providing HSE beds, particularly for dementia cases where extra and additional supports are required. Home care has also expanded enormously. In the last four years alone we have doubled provision in home care from about €400 million to €800 million and consequently added additional hours and so on. I will come back on this later.
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Yes, the Government has made that clear. We will be doing that. It is in the programme for Government. There is a forthcoming national policy on adult safeguarding for the health and social care sector that will set out how existing protections will be strengthened. That will be brought to Government shortly-----
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-----and that will commit to the development of adult safeguarding legislation for the sector. We have included the health (adult safeguarding) Bill in our current legislative programme to facilitate this. On a more broader sense, we are looking at a combination. I am trying to be realistic here and respond meaningfully to what the Deputy has articulated. I do not disagree with a lot of what she said. However, there will be a necessity for increased public sector provision, for continuing private sector provision and increasingly more home care provision, a significant amount of which will be private. Regulation of both public and private will always be key here but I believe there should be a rebalancing with more public service provision, particularly in the context of more acute situations around dementia and so forth. We might get an opportunity to discuss this in greater detail later.
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No, I do not. Just because you use what I would call exaggerated language does not make it true.
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I repeat that the bottom line is that all existing tenants will not have their rents increased beyond 2%. No attempts by the Deputy to sow confusion will change that reality. The more fundamental point in his presentation is that he and his party do not believe in a role for the market.
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I listened to Deputy Hearne, his party spokesperson, say this.
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Deputy Hearne does not believe in a role for the market. He said this. That is his position.
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He said it plenty of times. That is the bottom line.
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He has undermined-----
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Sorry, I did not interrupt once.
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What is intriguing is-----
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You have attacked and condemned institutional funds-----
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Ah come on. I know your-----
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Ah you can. Sure you make them up every day for God's sake.
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Go on out of that. Are you the leader of the Social Democrats now?
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The Deputy opposite has made assertions in his Leaders' Question and I am quite entitled to respond to them. The bottom line here is supply. There is nothing coming from him on supply. The Housing Commission recommended reform of the RPZ scheme. The Social Democrats welcomed the Housing Commission report at the time and attacked Government for the failure to respond to it. I remember it well in the Dáil. All of the Members did. The Minister then got the Housing Agency to do a review of the RPZs, which are coming to expire at the end of the year anyway. When we announced that review and I referenced a few things in February, all of the Deputies opposite jumped up and said I was eliminating RPZs, the rent pressure framework and so on. All of this was untrue. It was just polemics. It was hysterical hyperbole. That is all it was. There was no substance to it at all-----
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-----because of course we have not got rid of RPZs. If anything, as Threshold has stated, we have significantly increased protection for renters while at the same time, in a balanced measure, we have created policy certainty for investment because we desperately needed more supply in the rental market. We clearly do if we are to get to 50,000 per annum. That is the piece the Deputy does not address at all. He has never addressed it-----
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-----bar an SSIA-type investment scheme which would take a couple of years before you had the requisite funds to invest in capital in housing. The State is already investing capital in housing to the tune of €7 billion plus. I put the question yesterday.
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We need about €20 billion in terms of investment, made up of private sector and public sector. Tell me how the Deputy proposes to get private sector investment into the apartment market.
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No. That is not true
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It is not true.
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Sorry, all existing tenants will be capped at 2%.
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No-----
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All existing tenants, when they stay in the tenancy, will be capped at 2%.
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In terms of any new builds or new apartment builds-----
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-----after March 2026, when the new legislation comes in, they will be capped-----
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Please listen. The Deputy asked a question. All new apartments after March 2026 will be subject to a cap of the CPI, inflation. Then, six years beyond that, the landlord will be able to reset to market-----
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Let me finish because Deputy O'Callaghan has done nothing on supply. The combination of that facility for new builds, which we do not have yet, by the way, and there are no tenants in them-----
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-----and the CPI gives the basis upon which we can bring investment back into the market to get more apartments built because supply, ultimately, is the way to moderate rents.
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We are not going to do it by rent freezes or by this, that or the other that the Deputy's party has been proposing for the past two to three years, which will only conspire-----
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-----to reduce and suppress supply and allow rents to go up even higher.
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Could the Deputy repeat those figures, please?
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I thank the Deputy for raising what is a very real issue for many people in society, in terms of increased antisocial behaviour. We need both approaches. We need consistently and constantly to deal with the source and the evolution of this, including in school programmes. A lot is being done in schools actually. I visit schools a lot. I was in one recently where there was tremendous inclusivity. The school and the children themselves were working on a cultural committee involving different nationalities and so on. It was very heartwarming to see. In many cases the schools are well ahead of the rest of society. In the adolescent and teenage years, there is a heightened degree of antisocial behaviour, which sometimes manifests itself in significant violence and attacks on people and the creation of a sense of insecurity as people walk in public parks or on public streets. There are consequences in the use of antisocial behaviour orders. The deployment of body-worn cameras for gardaí will help to observe stuff. The community safety partnerships and their introduction is important, as are the community safety plans for every area. The expansion of youth justice and youth diversion measures is also important but we have to do more on that, including developing more youth programmes for young people for whom the mainstream school system is not responding or supporting them in order to keep them within the conventional system. We have Youthreach and many other programmes, but a renewed effort is required to deal with this. The fact that the youth portfolio is now in the Department of education will help in creating a proper continuum from education to youth services, which we had previously. Area partnerships are very important to restore a community's sense of ownership of these issues. Again, some of those area partnerships over the last decade or so went into decline. I have witnessed in the north-east inner-city initiative very significant progress being made. I do not think we can just deal with it with consequences alone, although there should be consequences. We need to consistently look at what kind of effective and impactful consequences would make a difference. We brought in laws, as the Deputy knows, to tackle the antisocial use of scramblers and quad bikes and all of that. We have given additional powers to gardaí but the Deputy is talking about something that is below the level of knife crime and so on. He is talking about general antisocial and intimidatory behaviour, attacks and so on. The line between-----
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The line between community engagement and moving into the youth juvenile space is a difficult enough one to crack.
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That is a fair presentation. I will talk to the Minister for justice, reflecting on what the Deputy said. There is an absence of consequences within that space before formally referring people to the juvenile justice system - which we are reluctant to do, to give young people a chance - and, on the other hand, ensuring people cannot just behave with abandon and no consequences. I take the Deputy's point but this needs to be thought through systemically. It is one thing to draw up a list of potential consequences but there is then implementation, follow-through and all of that. However, I take his point. I will talk to the Minister for justice in this regard and reflect on what the Deputy said. I will ask the Minister to talk to him about it.
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