Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I might try to go back to football-----
Sentiment score: 0.00
-----to wish Troy Parrott and our boys in green all the best of luck tonight in Prague. We are all hoping for a hat-trick. Tá cruachás na gcostas maireachtála ag éirí níos measa, go háirithe ó thaobh tionóntaí de. The cost-of-living emergency is getting worse. The measures the Government announced mean the cost of living will remain stubbornly high for workers and families who cannot make ends meet. Renters are not immune from this crisis and are in fact the worst hit as they face double-digit rent increases under the Government’s rent hike Bill and sky-high energy and grocery bills. We are also seeing a growing wave of evictions - in fact, the highest rate of evictions since the Famine. There was a 41% increase in evictions in the last quarter of 2025. Today we learn house prices are up again, this time by nearly 4% in the year to March, which pushes home ownership further out of reach. This rolling series of mass evictions is the result of the housing policies of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. We have had 20 families in Limerick, 14 families in an apartment complex in Ballybane in Galway and six incredibly vulnerable households in a retirement village in Sligo, including Frank, an 88-year-old wheelchair user with dementia, and his wife Elizabeth, aged 84, who has been his carer. Is the eviction of an elderly couple with dementia from a retirement home the housing policy the Tánaiste stands over? While the Minister and his Department roll out the red carpet for institutional investors in Cannes with the promise of higher rents and higher returns, 41% of renters are at risk of poverty and a growing number spend 50% of their income on rent. Tomorrow the homeless figures will set another shameful record and there has been nearly a decade of foot-dragging on the regulation of short-term lets. The housing crisis is being paid for by renters, who have nowhere to go when evicted, and Fianna Fáil told us six years ago it would solve the housing crisis and Fine Gael said the same thing a decade ago. We are still waiting and the problem is getting worse. In Spain, as part of its response to the crisis, the Sánchez Government has extended rental agreements by two years, which will stop evictions and freeze rents, while here in Ireland, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are facilitating a wave of mass evictions and allowing landlords to hike the rent to the market rate in between tenancies. As rents surge and a tsunami of evictions gets under way, will the Government intervene to protect renters? Will it freeze rent increases like Spain has and will it put a moratorium on evictions? What new cost-of-living measures will this Government bring forward for renters? Will it at the very least double the renter’s tax credit, as Labour has called for?
Sentiment score: -0.10
The Tánaiste selectively quoted from a number of sources, including the Housing Commission. The fact of the matter in regard to short-term lets is the Government is already talking about weakening the legislation by increasing the population cap and putting in exemptions that were not there when the original legislation was mooted. The housing crisis has become so severe that an 88-year-old with dementia is being evicted in County Sligo as we speak. That is how bad it has become under the watch of this Government. In his response, the Tánaiste did not actually address the question I asked, which was: what new cost-of-living measures will the Government bring forward to protect renters? Will the Government look at increasing the renter's tax credit? At the very least it is something the Government could, and should, do because this cost-of-living crisis is impacting renters the most. They are the most vulnerable people in the housing system at the moment.
Sentiment score: -0.18