I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes with extreme concern that: — 7,062 eviction notices were issued to tenants from January to March this year, up 51 per cent on the same period in 2025; — at the end of 2025 new rents were up statewide 5 per cent and 4.4 per cent for existing rents; and — six counties had double digit rent inflation last year including Limerick (12.6 per cent), Monaghan (12.4 per cent), Westmeath (11.5 per cent), Offaly (10.8 per cent), Cavan (10.6 per cent) and Galway (9.9 per cent); further notes that: — Statewide new rents were €1,744 per month and existing rents were €1,503 per month at the end of 2025; — new rents in Dublin were €2,232 per month and existing rents were €1,931 per month at the end of last year; — the Residential Tenancies Board's dispute caseload increased by 17.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same time last year; — all of this was prior to the Governments new rent regulations which came into effect which will see rents, evictions and disputes increase over the coming year; — these trends are the direct result of Government policy and will lead to increased displacement of tenants, increased rents and increased homelessness; and — Government continues to miss their social and affordable housing targets, targets that were too low to begin with, too few private for purchase homes are being built or coming to the market; resolves that: — Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's housing policy continues to make the housing crisis worse and in particular is failing renters; calls on Government to: — introduce an emergency ban on rent increases and no-fault evictions; — cut private rents by putting a full month's rent back into every private renter's pockets; — oppose rent increases for Council tenants, those in receipt of Housing Assistance Payment and Rental Accommodation Scheme and cost rental tenants; and — introduce a radical reset of housing policy as set out by the Housing Commission and to increase and accelerate the delivery of social, affordable and private for purchase homes. I acknowledge the fact that the Minister is in a meeting with the Oliver Bond Regeneration Forum and I hope he listens carefully to what he hears from the residents. Ten months ago, the Government announced what can only be described as the most controversial restructuring of the private rental sector in a decade. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage unilaterally changed apartment standards, and not in a good way. He outlined changes to rent regulation that were introduced earlier this year and made it clear that it was the Government's intention to give massive tax breaks to apartment developers. When the Minister outlined this, both at the time and subsequently, he said that he was doing it because he believed it would increase the supply of much-needed homes and that over time, rents would reduce. We said then and we are saying now that, in fact, the only thing that this cocktail of policy changes would do was make renters pay for the failed policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over a decade. We warned the Government that it would not work and that it would lead, at the very best, to a modest increase in apartment supply in parts of Dublin and possibly in Cork city, but that supply would be poorer quality, smaller, darker and more expensive and the rest of the country would get completely left behind. What we also made clear was that the introduction of the controversial market rent reset would see a dramatic increase in new rents for new tenancies from March of this year and that the incredibly confusing and poorly thought-through changes to tenure arrangements would lead to widespread confusion and an undermining of tenant security. It gives me no pleasure to say this but last week's Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, director's report confirms our worst fears. The Government did such a bad job of explaining what were incredibly complex tenure rules that it has led to an acceleration of the exit of single-property landlords from the market. More than 7,000 eviction notices were issued in the first three months of this year, the highest on record and up 51% on the previous quarter. In fact, according to one academic, this is the highest number of evictions since the Famine. That is truly astonishing. Contrary to the Government's attempts to explain this away, it is the third straight quarter in which we have seen a dramatic increase in eviction notices since the Minister announced his foolhardy changes. The RTB report also announced rents increasing significantly up to the end of last year. It now costs more than €20,000 minimum, on average, to rent across the State while in Dublin at the end of last year, the minimum was €26,000. It is going to be very interesting when we get to see the first set of Daft.ie figures, which are imminent, on the market rent reset. We will comment on them when they are published. The Minister's proposals will have a limited impact on supply but they will have a huge impact on renters. What does that mean? Right now, thousands of renters, single people, couples, families with children and pensioners do not know where they are going to live in six months. They are now desperately searching for an alternative rental, just at the time when Government allows landlords to jack up the rent for new rentals. What will the consequences be? Some renters will be able to find a new home but they will pay thousands of euro more than what they would otherwise have been paying in rent. Many others will not be able to secure a rental, particularly in the big cities of Waterford, Galway, Limerick and Cork. The daft.ie figures, whenever they are published, will be very revealing. What will people do? In many cases, working people, including single people, couples and families with children, will be forced into the indignity of moving back in with their parents because they have nowhere else to go. Others will see it as the straw that broke the camel's back and that they have no option but to emigrate to Canada, Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere. Worst of all, we will see an acceleration in the number of single people, couples and adults with children presenting as homeless and entering into emergency accommodation at a time when the numbers in such accommodation are higher than at any other time since records began. Those are the consequences of the Government's policy. It has done this knowingly and deliberately and it has done so for no good reason. The motion we have tabled tonight is not just to highlight all of those Government failures but to tell the Government loud and clear that renters need a different approach. It is an approach that recognises that rents are already too high and must be cut. It recognises that rent increases cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely and that we need an emergency ban on such increases for three years. Crucially, at a time when homeless services are completely overwhelmed, we need an emergency ban on no-fault evictions where the tenant has done nothing wrong. Of course, what we really need is not larger volumes of smaller, darker and more expensive apartments but, rather, the right kind of supply in the right place at the right price. That requires the Government to introduce the kinds of reforms set out by Sinn Féin, the Housing Commission and others to see the supply of social, genuinely affordable and private for-purchase homes increase and accelerate way beyond where the Government is currently at. How bad do things have to get before the Government accepts it has done something wrong? How much more hardship will it foist on renters? Our motion sets out the alternative. It is time the Government stopped looking after the interests of big investors and developers and started standing up for renters. It is on this basis that I commend the motion to the House.

Sentiment score: -0.11

When the Minister made his announcement last summer about the intended changes to the regulation of the rental sector two things happened. The first is that every quarter since July there has been a dramatic increase in eviction notices. In July, August and September it was a 38% increase. In October, November and December it was 41%. In the most recent figures it was 51%. That is the direct consequence of the policy decisions the Minister and his colleagues in the Government have made. During that whole period rents continued to rise so the Minister knows what is going to happen when we get both the Daft and RTB data from 1 March. He knows we are going to be moving back into double-digit rental inflation, first in some cities and then State-wide. That means there will be thousands of additional people looking for rental accommodation at a time when the rate of rental inflation is going through the roof. We are back to 2014, 2015 and 2016. That is what the Minister has done. He is telling people he is doing that so at some distant point in future there may be supply they may be able to afford, but what we are trying to highlight to him, and what the RTB data and soon-to-be-published Daft.ie data will tell him is right now there are real-world consequences to the decisions he has made impacting upon thousands upon thousands of people. No doubt some of those people will get new tenancies but they will be pushed into ever-greater financial hardship. The ones who cannot get tenancies will be forced to move back home with their parents, forced to emigrate or forced to present for emergency homeless accommodation. It is likely that the consequence of this will be that homeless presentations will continue to trend steadily upwards. The Minister is doing all that on a promise that we might get increased rental accommodation in the form of high-density, high-cost rental developments in very specific parts of the State. They will not be in the Minister’s county or in the counties of the majority of TDs. That strategy is not going to work. In the meantime, the decisions he is making are in real time punishing renters for his housing policy failures. All the while the Minister is not meeting his social housing targets. He can make all the comparisons he wants with the 1970s but we have twice the population now we had then and the level of social housing need is far greater. The State would need to double social housing output on its current level to come anywhere close to meeting the level of need. The housing targets the Minister is meeting the least are his affordable housing targets. He is so far off and the vast majority of the units still are not affordable and the private sector still is not delivering enough private homes for working people to buy, again because the Minister’s activation measures are not working or are not the right choices. We have set out a set of alternatives. We did not expect the Minister to support it but if these trends continue and the number of people who are being harmed because of the policies he is implementing continues to grow, at what point will he say enough is enough? Will it be after six months, 12 months or two years? Until he accepts that, we will continue to highlight his errors and to put forward alternatives. That is why I commend this motion to the House.

Sentiment score: -0.01