The question with this Bill, as with previous ones, is: will it help families, particularly low-and-middle income families, to access affordable and secure accommodation? I have particularly in mind those in private rented accommodation. The concern is that the Minister of State is bringing in further measures and amendments to what was brought in in March. That was one of the most far-reaching Bills relating to tenants and renters in this country because the Minister threw them completely at the mercy of free market speculation. That was a recipe for disaster. Let us look across at America and other countries, where unbridled free-marketeering is the order of the day. What I am hearing from some parts of the country and from my own constituency, Laois, is that those changes have been piled on. I am seeing it with the number of people coming into my constituency office. Since November-December of last year and right up to yesterday, the effects of those changes have been seen by us at local level. It is piling huge pressure on households and individuals renting. There is a case on the street where I have my office where more than half the income of a household is going on rent. That is not sustainable. We cannot do that. That is the result of what is happening here, in this legislation and previous legislation that the Minister brought in. The notices to quit continue to spiral. Rents in new tenancies have not just hit the roof but gone out through it. In particular, a cap needs to be reimposed in section 8. I will table an amendment to that effect. Most of us were critical of the rent pressure zones. We would have liked them to be stronger and there are ways out of it, but they provided some cooling effect in the municipal districts where they applied. The evidence of that is that when the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government removed them, we could see what happened. The evidence is there in the rent reports of Daft.ie. Looking at the Residential Tenancies Board figures, everything shows. It is not only us telling the Minister; the hard data tells him this. I told the Minister about the increases in Laois. The average increase for a two-bedroom house or apartment has risen by 34% in the space of one year. Now there is nothing else that I know of that has gone up 34%. That is like something that would happen in a banana republic but that happened in County Laois. Nobody is disputing it because it can be seen in the hard data. Three-bedroom new lets cost over €2,000 a month. It is the law of the jungle. Nothing less than that is what has happened. It is Trumpian-style politics and that is regrettable. I recognise that some small landlords are being fair enough about it. In a lot of cases, they have tried to not be too penal about it. On top of all that then, in recent times the Minister has lowered the standards and for apartments and the size, including the sizes of windows. The last time window sizes were reduced was under British rule because one of the issues on which the rent was based was the amount of light going into the little cabins that people lived in. Here we are now with 36 sq. m apartments and the Minister has limited the light going into them. Not alone has he limited space, he has limited the light. Then the developers building apartments, including those who had started, got a tax break. To cap it all, the Minister is bringing in this measure on rent so you have tenants competing against each other for somewhere to live. That is what is being played. It is like an auction and some landlords are using that. In all of this, the context is always important. I am raising this with the Minister of State because I am hearing this from constituents day in, day out. All of this is happening at a time the cost of living is going up. There is no disputing it, with increases in the cost of electricity, fuel, groceries and transport. The coming winter will be very difficult. We are in June now, but renters and a lot of people who have mortgages are struggling badly at present. The message I want to convey to the Minister of State is the human cost to all this. There is a human cost in terms of stress. There is a human cost in terms of mental health. There is a human cost in terms of conflict within families over it. Health is affected, relationships are breaking down and, of course, there is poverty. He will have seen the figures for child poverty earlier in the week. That is not good enough in one of the richest states in the world. As always, I am not arguing for willy-nilly measures to be brought in. What I am trying to get across to the Minister of State is that the cumulative effect of the measures the Minister has taken over recent times has reduced standards, that landlords, and particularly big landlords and developers, have benefited, and that the Minister has piled further pressure to people who are already struggling. That is not good enough. We do not need to be doing this. There was another road to take with this. The impact of the measures being imposed by the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government should be assessed. We should let it run maybe to the six-month point, and the effect of this on people and on housing should be assessed at that stage in September or October. It should be examined in the cold light of day. I urge the Government to do that. The Minister may have disputed what we were saying to him in January, February and March but we were seeing what was happening on the ground. Let us see the effects of this in six months and see what is happening. I am asking the Minister of State to use this Bill. He has introduced a pile of amendments. I ask him to go back and look at this and to try to put some cooling effect on the spiralling cost of private rented accommodation. None of this will do anything for low-and-middle income households who are really under pressure. We should not be doing this to people. This is not fair. What has happened is not fair and everybody here in this House, if they look at the evidence, will recognise that. That is not the type of society that we should be trying to live in. Of course, we need more housing. The measures the Minister of State brought in will not provide more housing. They are providing more hardship. That is what they are doing and that is not good enough.

Sentiment score: -0.06