I support amendments Nos. 2, 7 and 8 in relation to reviews and reports. The Minister and the Minister of State know what is going to happen here because we can see it already. We could see it from the moment they announced this in autumn last year. We can see what is happening – notices to quit are increasing, rents are increasing and pressure on tenants to move out is increasing. This is because many landlords – I am not putting all of them in the one box – and especially the bigger ones know that come 1 March the sky is the limit. This evening the Government is planning on ramming through this legislation. We are TDs but we are human beings as well. I ask the Minister and the Minister of State here to think about the people who are in private rented accommodation - I know some of them, and the two Ministers here know them - who are spending 50% or 55% of their total income on rent. That means there is not enough money for food, clothes, to heat the place, for their kids or a whole range of other things, and that is just the basics to get through life. I ask them to think about those people for a minute. Three Laois TDs will have a vote on this – one Fianna Fáil TD, one Fine Gael TD and an Independent, yours truly - and I dearly wish all three of us were voting together on it. I get that the six-year certainty around tenancy is a good thing but the problem is what the Government is bringing in on the back of it. It is a Trojan Horse. It will have huge implications. My amendment, and I hope we will get to it, is around trying to limit it to 2% or the rate of inflation, the CPI. Who is the rate of inflation not good enough for? Who is 2% not good enough for? Who is lobbying for this? Is the Irish Property Owners Association getting everything it wants? Are the developers getting everything? They have got everything they want – the VAT cuts, the tax breaks and everything else they wanted. I want to see more housing but what the Government is doing is a charter for misery and further misery. The Minister knows it and I know it because I meet these people – ordinary working people. These are couples, lone parents and all sorts of ordinary workers trying to get by. It is pensioners too. This is one coming down the line. People sitting here in ten years' time will have to deal with a tsunami of pensioners who are in private rented accommodation. The State will end up supplementing that if we do not do better about cost rental and if we do not do something to slow down rent increases. The RPZs were not perfect. They had some cooling effects but, despite them, daft.ie and other surveys show that rents for new tenancies in County Laois over the last two years have increased 15% to 16% over existing tenancies. If that is happening at a time when we have RPZs, what in the name of the Lord God almighty is going to happen when you remove all of this and you can say the market rent? The market rent is the highest in an area or district. The Minister knows how it is going to work. There is talk of how there will not be no-fault evictions. There will be evictions. There will be notices to quit for the simple reason, as I have pointed out numerous times, that the rents will be so high that people will not be able to afford them. The landlords who are inclined to have a rack-renting attitude face 1 March with this gift in their hands. Make no mistake - it will be used. I am not saying every landlord will use it but the rack-renting ones and the bigger ones will. Tenants going into new apartments and housing will face extortionate increases. The tenancies do not last six years, and we know there can be a quick turnover. There is a three-year provision for students. I have a granddaughter who is going to college, and she commutes five hours a day. She would not have a hope of being able to stay near the college, and it is the same for her pals. The simple reason is that rents are already too high. What is going to happen when this comes through in the private sector? The renters in Laois will be very hard hit. I am already seeing increases in the rent pressure zones. Despite some cooling effects, the fact is that new tenancies are already 15%, 16% or 17% higher in the last two years. A one-bedroom apartment across the road from my office was on the market for €1,750 per month. A very small house in Kilminchy was €2,100 a month. In Foxburrow, a four-bedroomed house, which was not huge, was €2,500 a month. People cannot afford that. Look at the average wage and take-home pay. Some of these people are paying for crèches and commuting, they have to make payments on two cars, and they are trying to save for deposits and do a whole range of things. They are literally strapped in trying to carry out all of this. For those landlords who are unscrupulous, the race will be to get to the top. I support the idea of reviews and reports, but that in itself will not be enough. That is why the amendment tries to limit this to 2%. I recognise there is inflation, and I am trying to be somewhat reasonable about this. However, this will mean that all impediments to skyrocketing rents are removed. Existing tenants in homes and apartments are being put under huge pressure and will be put under more pressure due to higher rents. This measure will provide a climate for that to happen. There will be strategic notices to quit, as I said, because people will not be able to afford this. I appeal to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs not to vote this through. This will hurt tens of thousands of tenants who are already struggling to keep their heads above water and who already have to deal with difficulties. I have never come into this House and said there is a magic wand. I know this is a complex thing to sort out. However, I also know that a number of things need to happen. Within the gift of the State is one of those things, which is to increase the supply of cost-rental housing for those who are middle aged and who will never be able to get a loan again, or perhaps those who have come out of a broken marriage. They need to be able to get into cost rental. We need to help those people and provide a not-for-profit option that will pay for itself over time. The Minister knows how it works. I remember talking about the need for cost rental here 12 or 13 years ago, when people did not know what we were talking about. I welcome the fact that the Government is moving in that direction, but we need to move more quickly. We need more of this. The mass production of houses is a drum that I have banged loudly in this Chamber. As I said yesterday to the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, for the first time, the point has arrived with the council engineers and architects that we need to be able to mass-produce. Mass production means speeding up and reducing costs. While there has been a lot of talk from the officials in the Department about standardised design and so on, this has now gone a step further. There are real standardised plans so that houses can be the very same internally, although the outside texture can be changed if the county council wants to do that. That will enable matters to be speeded up and will remove a lot of the blockages. I say sincerely to the Minister and the Minister of State that they should do anything else they can to accelerate that. We do not want to drop standards, and I am not arguing for that. However, we need to do whatever we can to accelerate delivery and reduce costs. The money is there. We know it is taxpayers' money and we have used it well. I will certainly support anything we can do to reduce costs and increase supply. I recognise that not all of it will be provided by the State, and I am not arguing for that. However, the State is a big player. It is because the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil in the late nineties decided that we would just opt out of social housing that we have the mess we have. We had the crash because the regulations were taken off construction and the banks, and we wound up in the situation we are in now. It is a difficult situation. I have argued over the last 15 years to increase the number of apprentices. We must do that because we cannot build houses unless we have the people. Let us try to attract back from abroad more of the workers who went during that period and might wish to come back now. We need to increase the labour supply and ensure we have sufficient workers to build houses. People want to save for a deposit, but they cannot do so while paying these rents. They are not affordable for young people or the cohort of middle-aged and elderly people I have referred to. I recently came across a couple who are almost 80. The local authority, Laois County Council, currently houses them. I do not mean to plámás the council, but it has really stretched itself to try to do its best. I know the Minister is there on Friday, which I welcome. It is always good to see Ministers in the constituency. The one message I would give to the Minister is to come and see what is being done. We want more of it, and we want it replicated in other parts of the country. I ask the Minister not to force this through. The Irish Property Owners Association is getting what it wants. The developers are getting what they want. However, tenants are suffering hardship, stress and misery, as well as workers, students, lone parents and ordinary people. Let us think about those people. Let us not force through this Bill tonight. This needs to be rowed back on. We cannot heap more pressure and stress on those people.

Sentiment score: 0.03

I am here to speak on behalf of tenants and renters in towns in Laois like Portlaoise, Mountmellick, Portarlington, Mountrath, Rathdowney, Graiguecullen, Stradbally and so on. I am meeting people regularly, daily sometimes, who are struggling because of the situation with housing and the high rents they are paying. The Government is bringing in a measure. We have heard the RTB projections in the debate. The Minister can contradict them if he likes. It knows, and the people who look for this know, that this is going to lead to a further increase. The market keeps getting talked about, the altar of the market. The high priests at the altar are the landlords, developers and vulture funds. They are there as the high priests. During previous terms of the Government being in power, sometimes with the Progressive Democrats, that brought us to the Celtic tiger, we saw what the deregulation of the building industry did when we allowed people to self-certify. The taxpayer is cleaning up that bill in the form of the mica Bill and the financial bill for it and in the form of fire remedies in apartments. If I heard right, I think it is 20,000 apartments, a lot of them in Dublin, because of what the Government did at that time. The taxpayer picks up the bill - Joe and Mary Public. I want to represent those people who are paying that. I have been a Member of this House for 15 years, like Deputy Boyd Barrett. This week or last week we were here 15 years. This is one of the worst pieces of legislation and one of the most dangerous I have seen. That is why I am speaking passionately about this. I feel strongly about this and I am really concerned. I am not going to personalise anything and I am not looking to have a go at anybody, but I am concerned about what the Government is doing here. I told the Government to look back at when it adored the altar of the market in the early 2000s as we went through the Celtic tiger. Look at the mess it left behind. We are still cleaning up that mess. The taxpayer is cleaning it up. We are still paying the interest on the bank bailout from that time. We are still paying the bill for the mica scandal. We are still going to pay the bill for the fire remedies in all those apartments that people have mortgages on and they are renting in unsafe apartments around Dublin. I looked at one. One was on television. I think it was last night. The outside of it was covered in timber. You would think about Grenfell Tower. I am saying this honestly to the Minister and Minister of State. Who in the name of God allowed that to happen? Talk about a tinder-box. That is the conclusion we came to when looking at a repeat of the programme last night. I think it was a "Prime Time" programme in relation to the timber cladding on the outside of it. Dry timber was on the outside of it and no fire breaks were inside. That is what the Government allowed. The Government allowed the banks to give out money. I have met people who got loans from banks who never should have got them. There were loan consultants in banks. These jack-the-lads were smart lads. They were supposed to be smarter than the rest of us. They gave money to people who did not have the capacity to repay it. Why? The high altar of the market was adored and the high priests at it told the Government this was what was needed to do it, Seánie Fitz and the boys. That is what happened. I am thinking of one couple. They have been dealing with it for 12 years in Laois trying to keep them in the house they are in, and if not, trying to get them into social housing. They have had a notice to quit from Pepper hanging over them for 12 years. It has employed Mars Capital, Eversheds and all sorts of arm-twisters and debt collectors to try to turn the screws on these two people to get them out of where they are, who should never have received a loan. If you were a member of the loan committee on the credit union, you would not give them one tenth of what they got as a loan. I am saying that honestly. It is the high altar of the market. The Minister says, and stated repeatedly, that if we increase supply, we will have loads of houses and be able to reduce rent. I ask him to go back and look at the data from the last time his party was in government for a sufficiently long term. I am saying this to him honestly, just to be factual about it. Did rents go down in 2005 or 2006, the year we built 94,000 houses? Did rents go down in 2007? No, they did not. Supply shot up. We had loads of houses. In fact, we did not have people to fill some of them. Rents did not go down. I can think of all the estates around where I live. I live in the middle of a whole lot of new estates. I can think of those estates where the rents shot up. Some houses were empty. Landlords, developers and speculators who bought them were willing to wait for people to come along and rent them. They kept the rents high. That is what they did. They eventually got it. At the moment, unless the Minister is in a parallel universe to me, the people who I meet who are renting are already in serious hardship. They are paying a lot more, in most cases, than what people are paying on mortgages. That is a fact. Laois has around 13,000 people commuting out of it every morning. Along with paying for the car to get to work, mainly in Dublin or Naas or somewhere, along with that, they are paying for childminding and a whole range of things. They are already living a very difficult life. I can tell the Minister it is no fun. I am here to try to represent and put this to the Minister. If I do not do this tonight, I am neglecting my duties as a Teachta Dála. I am appealing to the Minister on this. If the Minister takes off whatever cooling effect the RPZs and the current status has, despite which, as I told the Minister earlier, rents on new lets in Laois have nonetheless gone up by over 16% in one survey and 15% in another compared with existing tenancies - the figures are there; they are not my figures - what is going to happen after 1 March? We need to stabilise rents. That requires rent limits. I have put in a reasonable proposal in my amendment that they would not go beyond 2% per year or inflation through the consumer price index, whichever is the lower. That is reasonable. We need to have some limits on it. We need to increase the amount of cost rentals. It is tiny at the moment. I welcome what is happening. I welcome the fact that the Government is moving on that and on affordable housing, but it is not enough and it is not quick enough. That needs to be accelerated. We cannot create a situation where people will suffer more hardship, misery and stress. There will be more evictions. One other effect of what the Government is going to do that has not been talked about is the wealth transfer to landlords and big developers. What will happen is when rents go up, it means HAP will have to go up and have to chase that increase in rent. This is a point the Government needs to take on board. The Minister and Minister of State will see the figures for last year on how much is spent on leasing, HAP and homeless accommodation. It is a huge part of the housing budget. I want to see the housing budget used well and to see us getting value out of it. The Minister is correct that it is taxpayers' money but the amount of that going on HAP and supplements will have to increase. Due to the measure the Government is bringing in, it will be chasing that. That is what happened with every other change it made, which made this worse. It had the same impact. The amount of HAP and that transfer of wealth from the public purse to these big landlords increased. We have to give people the space to be able to move towards buying. As was mentioned, there is a huge amount of money on deposit in this country. We have a very high level of personal debt but we also have a huge amount of money on deposit. I remember that in 2013 or 2014, the credit unions stated they had around €10 billion or €11 billion. I am open to correction but the figure was something like that. We are willing to use some of this to be invested in a type of housing bond where there would be a modest return on it for the people who invest in the credit union. The banks have that. There is a huge amount of money on deposit, which could be used, and used well, in investment bonds and housing bonds to build the type of cost-rental and affordable housing we need. I do not know why the Government has not considered that. I can only draw the conclusion that it is listening too much to the wrong people. I learned something very quickly nearly three decades ago as a councillor. If we listened to everybody who came in the door to lobby for this, that and the other, and did it and went along with it, we would have made a right mess of things. When we listened to them too much, we did make a mess of things. You have to learn from your mistakes. Sometimes, you have to do the right thing and do what is right by people. Money is there on deposit. We need to set up housing bonds and have them in place. We need to use that money and taxpayers' money well. The Government is using it to increase skyrocketing rents, which will happen. Everything that is there, all the evidence and all the projections tell us that. To chase and have that transfer of wealth to pay rent supplements to big landlords will make matters a hundred times worse. That is what is going to happen. As I said, three of us who are voting on this tonight, hopefully, are from Laois; a Fine Gael TD, a Fianna Fáil TD and myself. As the Government is framing the Bill without the amendments, I have to vote against it. This is not because I want to be obstructionist or do down any good suggestion. Tenancy certainty would be a good thing, as would fixity of tenure. Michael Davitt talked about it 150 years ago, when some of our great-grandparents might have been around, yet here we are now. The problem is what the Government is cloaking the six-year thing in is a Trojan horse for the other measures that will nullify and kill that for the reasons outlined because people will not be able to afford those rents.

Sentiment score: 0.04