As I have stated previously, this Bill will be deeply damaging for renters. When we talk about renters, who are we talking about? We are talking about families, individuals and young people who are trying to work, go to school, go to college and live their lives. This Bill increases rents in a way that will absolutely hammer people. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Minister are completely disconnected from the reality of what is involved in trying to rent a home right now. If they had any sense of what it is like to rent or to try to find somewhere to rent, they would not be doing this. Earlier, the Taoiseach stated that this is what we have to do in order to get supply. The Minister also stated that this is what is needed to get supply and that at some point supply will increase and rents will come down. I have asked the Minister and the Taoiseach the following question on a number of occasions. Neither has answered it. At what point will this policy incentivise a level of supply that will bring rents down? Will it be in five, ten or 15 years' time? It is never. Rents are never going to come down unless they crash, and then we will have an economic crash. That is the only point at which rents are going to come back down to any sort of sustainable level. In the context of this policy, the Minister is saying clearly that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents are willing to sacrifice these renters, who will have to pay higher rents in the coming months and years to incentivise a supply of housing that at some point will lead to rents coming down. My colleague Deputy Eoin Ó Broin referred earlier to officials. I asked the officials who appeared before the housing committee the point at which this policy will bring down rents. They said they hope that it will bring down rents. This Bill is based on a flawed market theory of housing that completely fails to understand how housing markets and systems work. They do not work like normal market commodities, with supply and demand and prices going up and down. I was asked about this earlier. Some might ask whether it is the case that if the market price is not what a renter is willing to pay and if a landlord can get that market price, is that not reasonable? However, housing is not a banana or a car. It is a fundamental human need. When people are faced with either having or not having a home, they will pay absolutely everything they can to get one. If the rent is determined by the market, landlords will squeeze as much as they can get out of it and people are forced to pay more and more. It is not like buying a car or a banana; they do not have a choice. They need a home, and so they spend everything they have to get it. That is why housing markets are regulated and why there are rent controls. It is the reason the Government brought in rent controls in the first instance, but now it is undoing that and has been captured and has once more bought into thinking that housing markets work like the normal supply-and-demand models highlighted in junior certificate economics. This is not junior certificate economics. This is people's lives. It is the lives of hundreds of thousands of current and future renters. The Taoiseach has told the Opposition that it has no monopoly on compassion, that those in government are also compassionate and that Fianna Fáil was and is the party of a social conscience. There is no social conscience in this decision. It is a cruel, crude, cold decision that the Minister knows and has agreed will lead to higher rents. Who is going to pay those rents? Has he thought about that? It is going to be families who are struggling to try to cover rents now. They are going to be evicted. This is the other flaw with the Bill. The Minister and the Taoiseach have both stated, very misleadingly, that this Bill is about increased security of tenure for renters. That is absolutely untrue. This is not about increased security of tenure for renters. All existing renters will get no new security of tenure. Again, the Taoiseach stated earlier that this will have no impact on existing renters. That is the point. It provides no additional protections from no-fault evictions for existing renters, so we are going to continue to see a tsunami of evictions. I am not sure how the Minister feels about the fact that we have reached the highest level of evictions in this country since Famine times. That is what we are seeing. I do not know how the Minister stands over that or how he stands over a Bill that will make the situation worse. Not only are we going to continue to have the pressure of evictions like those that are happening for various reasons, mainly because landlords are selling up, now, we are also going to have a situation where some landlords will be licking their lips at the thought that they can get market rents if they get particular tenants out of their properties and that they will no longer be subject to the inter-tenancy rent cap. The really disappointing part of this Bill is that it came about on foot of a decision that was made directly as a result of lobbying by institutional investors. The lobbying record, as I have stated previously, makes this very clear. Irish Institutional Property represents all the big institutional funds, including IRES REIT, Kennedy Wilson and Ardstone. I have a copy of the lobbying register here. It shows the number of times Pat Farrell from Irish Institutional Property has met with the Government in respect of these policies - there is a list of meeting after meeting - and to push for these changes. Killian Woods wrote an article about IRES REIT in the Business Post last August. It talks about how IRES REIT, which is one of Ireland's biggest private landlords, with more than 3,500 properties, is so happy. It states: From Ires Reit’s perspective, the most eye-catching change was the new measure that now allows landlords to reset rents to market rates between tenancies. Under the current measures, landlords are required to maintain rents at the same level between tenancies. The article describes how a representative of IRES REIT showed investors a chart which indicated that its average current rents are estimated to be 19% below market rent. The article then states: Under the new rent control rules, there is a windfall sitting there for the company. It has the opportunity to unlock an additional €19.9 million of rent a year by raising rents to market rate. IRES REIT is going to get €20 million a year from the measures contained in the Bill. Kennedy Wilson will be similar. The Government is going to give these investors €20 million a year as each churn happens, and renters will be required to pay the market rent. This Bill has nothing to do with security of tenure, renters or balancing the rights of renters and landlords. It is about giving a windfall to institutional investors in this country, namely large corporate landlords. That is what it is about. The Government has bought in - hook, line and sinker - into their idea that if we allow rents to rise higher, supply will increase, the unit numbers will rise and that will deal with the housing crisis. The complete opposite is the case. This Bill will make the housing crisis substantially worse. It is a disastrous measure for renters and young people who are stuck at home. It will put it more out of reach. It will put home ownership more out of reach. It is incredible really when we think how far Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have come from being the parties supposedly of home ownership to now being the parties of the big institutional investors. They are willingly making policy and laws to screw renters and the younger generation so that the institutional investors can make more profit. The Government is happy to stand over that. I mentioned earlier the disconnect from the human misery this Bill is going to bring about. What has really disturbed me about all the discussion about this has been that disconnection. It terrifies me because what it says to me is that the Government is not actually concerned about this mass of human misery and the social catastrophe that is happening because it is willing to inflict more. It tells me that what it wants to do and what it is doing is putting in place policies that do not solve the housing crisis or make housing more affordable but simply keep the market going. This is, ultimately, another subsidisation of the private market to add to the very significant subsidies the Government gives out. I put the figures together there, and between the VAT cuts introduced in the budget, the HAP that goes to private landlords and Croí Cónaithe subsidies, we are talking about over €1 billion a year going to the private market every year. The figure over the lifetime of the Government will be €5 billion. This is €5 billion it will give to the private market with no permanent housing in return and no public housing delivered. We are talking about €5 billion. The Government says it will not create a State construction company because it will take too long and the Government is not sure. A fraction of that amount would set up a public construction company to build genuinely affordable homes. The Government is not interested in solving the housing crisis. It just wants to keep the market going. It wants to keep the investors, the property developers, the banks and the system going as is because if it were interested in solving the housing crisis, it would realise that what it is doing with this is actually embedding an unsustainable market. That is what the Government is doing because these rents are completely unsustainable. I looked at the rents being charged on daft.ie and I look around the country. People are expected to pay thousands of euro every month. For example, in Cork, people have been charged €4,800 for a four-bedroom property. In Santry in my own constituency, the rent for a two-bed is €2,500 per month, the rent for a two-bed in Beaumont is €2,700 and the rent for a three-bedroom home in Galway is €3,000. This is a picture of the new units being built in Northwood in Santry. What are they charging? They are charging €1,900 for a studio, €2,600 for a two-bed apartment and €3,300 for a three-bed. This is before the Government's changes come in. When we look at the income of a teacher on €44,000, after taxes, we are talking about in the region of 117% of his or her entire take-home pay to pay rent of €3,300. If we take a nurse on €37,000, we are talking about 127% of his or her entire take-home pay. The percentage for a person on the minimum wage with take-home pay of €1,900 a month is 168% of their take-home pay. It is impossible to pay these rents. This is how the Government expects an economy and society to function. Where are we going to get our nurses, teachers, bus drivers or doctors from? That is in our cities. They cannot function in many ways at the moment because of these policies. It is deeply frustrating for many people around the country who are going to see their rents increased to market rent. It will not build one home for them. While it might incentivise a certain amount of really expensive apartments being built in Dublin, it will not build one new home in Carrick-on-Suir, Kerry, Louth, Donegal or Mayo. All the renters in those counties will face higher market rents, because all landlords will be able to bring the rent up to market rent when a tenant moves out or every six years in the new tenancies in those parts of the country, and they will not see one new unit from these measures. Not one new unit will be built by an institutional investor, which the Government is making these decisions for. It is a disastrous policy and it just shows how disconnected Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are from the reality of this housing crisis. Unfortunately, it is not going to work and the housing crisis will continue. What will the Government bring about? It will bring about higher rents for renters. It is deeply disappointing and frustrating and we will continue to talk about this in terms of the disaster that the Government is going to make worse.
Sentiment score: -0.07
I never said it was.
Sentiment score: 0.00
It is not mud; it is the reality.
Sentiment score: 0.00
This Bill lacks it.
Sentiment score: 0.00
They will not be able to afford to be in it.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Not for existing renters. You give no protection to existing renters.
Sentiment score: -0.15
They are still as vulnerable to no-fault evictions.
Sentiment score: -0.23
No, I said very clearly and we say clearly, a ban on no-fault evictions.
Sentiment score: 0.05
It does absolutely. It is not a hypocritical statement; it is reality.
Sentiment score: 0.18
That is disgraceful. What the Minister does not care about is people is who are going to suffer these rents. We are not doing this as 20 seconds for social media. That is disgraceful.
Sentiment score: -0.18
That is a disgrace. Withdraw that.
Sentiment score: -0.25
We are voting against rent increases.
Sentiment score: 0.00
But not to existing renters. At least have the honesty to accept that.
Sentiment score: 0.35
Build affordable housing. You are the one who is doing the false choice. Hypocrisy.
Sentiment score: 0.00
To increase rents.
Sentiment score: 0.32
The Minister has not answered the question about whether rents are going to come down.
Sentiment score: 0.00
When will rents come down?
Sentiment score: 0.00
I do not have policies. The Minister is the one who is in government.
Sentiment score: 0.00
I do not have the means to implement policies. When are the rents going to come down?
Sentiment score: 0.00
Ah, stop.
Sentiment score: -0.30
Rather than answer the question of when rents will go up, how much they will go up by, when they are going to fall and giving any sort of sense of what will happen, the Minister just comes back with "supply, supply, supply". Supply is the answer to the housing crisis, but it is not the only answer. Housing systems across the world also have things such as rent controls, protection from evictions and measures for security of tenure, which the Minister himself claims this Bill is about. It is not all just about supply, supply, supply. Even if we take it that it is all about supply, it is about the type of supply. What type of supply are we building? The type of supply the Government is incentivising is one that is really expensive and unaffordable to the overwhelming majority of people. It is the supply of housing that I have problems with and, to be very straight, the institutional investors who are here. These funds and this model of housing are hugely problematic. Unlike the Minister, I have researched and worked in housing for over two decades. Academics, researchers and campaigners have analysed what the financialisation of housing is. Does the Minister know what the financialisation of housing is? It is a process whereby housing has been turned into an investment commodity and an asset. International real estate funds and wealth funds have been driving that agenda for over two decades. The Minister puts the real estate investment trusts across as if they are some sort of people who are here to help us out, but the Government is giving them our rents and tax breaks worth hundreds of millions. They are not here to help us out. They are here to maximise the rent and profits they can get. They are not here to provide affordable housing. They are here to lock as many people as possible into as high a rent as possible for as long as possible. That is their model. The Minister knows, because he is talking to them, that their financial model is based on an ongoing increasing rate of return. How do they get that? From ongoing, increasing rents. That is their model. We are building in a fundamentally problematic form of housing that is based on ever-increasing rents. These are the rents of institutional investment funds and corporate landlords, such as Kennedy Wilson, IRES REIT and Greystar. The Minister says there is no issue with this, but one in five of all rental properties in Dublin is now owned by institutional landlords and it is heading towards one in four. He claims that our policies will lead to housing misery in perpetuity, but the Government is embedding a permanent form of unaffordable housing supply that is not about delivering housing or homes but is about delivering investment commodities. I will come back to the Minister on the petty taunts that he threw claiming that I was only doing this for social media clips. He used terms such as "word spaghetti" and said that we are peddling in misery. What I am doing is not peddling in misery. It is highlighting the human cost of what the Government's policies are. I am talking about how its rent hikes will devastate people, cause rising homelessness and how it is inflicting massive misery. The misery here is what the Government is doing is normalising the misery of the highest number of evictions since the Famine. If the Minister throws petty taunts around, I will come back to say to him that what we are doing is, number one, highlighting the human cost, which he is unwilling to accept, and the solutions he is unwilling to accept. He said we have no solutions but we have put them out there. They are a rent freeze, a ban on no-fault evictions, a public construction company and investment from the €166 billion that is in private money. Solutions are there. It is really pathetic of the Minister to try to claim that we are somehow doing this for social media. For the last ten years, I have been highlighting the scandal of homelessness in this country. Ten years ago, I walked as part of a small march that was one of the first groups of families who are homeless. A child was walking that in her school uniform, with a little sticker on her back stating, "Help me. I am homeless". I am unlike the Minister. He has supported Governments for the past decade and stood over year after year of rising homelessness and not once did he speak out and say this is a scandal and that we should not accept one child being homeless. He voted, in the confidence and supply agreement, with Fine Gael and, since 2020, he has been in the Government and not once did he stand up and say what we are doing is wrong and that we should not accept one child as homeless. What did he do? He voted for the lifting of the eviction bans, which led to more people going into homelessness. One of the other decisions, which I described at the time as one of the cruelest decisions any Irish Government has ever made, was making a policy and lifting a ban on evictions when it knew it would lead to rising homelessness. What has it resulted in? Thousands of children being made homeless. For the Minister to claim I am doing this for social media clips is a disgraceful comment to make. It is absolutely disgraceful. I come here every day to represent the families and children across the country and in my constituency who suffer and whose lives are being damaged by the Government's policy failures. That is the truth. That is the reality the Minister does not want to face. The Minister's rental Bill will lead to more human misery and he is prepared to accept that as a price because he thinks it will lead to some supply with an increase of large institutional investor-funded apartments and he accepts the people who will not be able to afford the rents and will be made homeless as the collateral damage. It is a disgrace and I will keep calling it out in the passionate way I do and in a way that highlights that this is a social catastrophe that is causing massive human misery. I will not let one day go by when I will not call that out.
Sentiment score: -0.08
The Minister has still not answered a fundamental question that we asked. Based on the introduction of the Bill, when will rents stabilise? When will rents start reducing as a result of the Bill? The Minister has not answered the question and it runs against all policy, which is supposed to be evidence-based policy, that he understands the consequences and impacts of a Bill but has not set out the core purpose, which is going to have significant social impact by resulting in rising rents. He accepts this but he will not set out when rents will fall as a result of this. Again, the Minister has not set out or accepted how renters who are forced to or have to leave tenancies are going to pay higher market rents. How are they going to afford it? Where is the income going to come from? In the Minister's view, what is a sustainable or average rent? In the Minister's view, what should we be aiming for in terms of average rents? Maybe he could set that out. What does he think is a sustainable and appropriate national average rent? The Minister needs to accept and make clear a point. While he stated that for the first time, he is introducing no-fault evictions, protection and security of tenure for renters, he is not introducing it for all existing renters. Can he at least have the honesty to state that he is introducing a form of security of tenure for new tenancies but that all existing tenants are still covered under the same situation whereby they can be evicted on a no-fault basis? That is a fundamental mistake with this Bill. Why will the Minister not accept our proposed amendment to extend no-fault evictions to all existing tenancies? In regard to the proposals and amendments we are putting forward, that is one of the core ones.
Sentiment score: 0.06
I support the amendments, particularly the introduction of a no-fault eviction ban for all tenancies, and that no eviction could take place where there is an identified risk of homelessness to the tenant. This exists in countries like Belgium, for example, where people cannot be evicted when they have nowhere else to go. It is still shocking to me that we have the highest level of eviction since the Famine, yet the Government acts as if it is normal and acceptable. It is absolutely unacceptable to us that we are heading towards what is likely to be at least 20,000 households being served notices of eviction this year, if it remains in line with last year. Such people are coming to my constituency clinic, and every TD has been contacted by people who are in desperate situations. Someone contacted me just today to set out their case. They are a cancer patient and their husband is ill. They talk about being stuck in a renting cycle for 25 years. They also put off having children until they would be in secure housing, but now, of course, they are at the point where it does not look like it is going to happen for them. They describe it as follows: Yet again, we are being faced with eviction for no reason except the landlord is deciding to sell up. We are so tired of having to jump at somebody's whim. Being ill, they are exhausted. They describe the emotional and mental impact of this. They continue: We just want somewhere we can call our own, where we can be safe from homelessness, and not fear every knock at the door, letter or phone call. We have never been late with a rent payment or been in arrears. We have always kept up a good relationship with landlords. There are thousands of tenants like this up and down this country. The Bill, as currently put forward, without this amendment, does nothing for the existing hundreds of thousands of renters, who will still be exposed to no-fault evictions. The Bill does nothing to address their situation. That is why we feel it is vital that we have a ban on no-fault evictions, in particular where people are at risk of homelessness. It is also an opportunity for the Government if it is concerned about security of tenure, which this Bill is supposed to be about. If it was actually about that, the Government would accept this amendment and apply it to all tenancies.
Sentiment score: -0.15
It is deeply disappointing that the Minister of State is rejecting these amendments. I also cannot wrap my head around the fact that the Minister, Deputy Browne, said he does not tolerate or accept one child being homeless. Right now, the Minister of State could prevent thousands of children becoming homeless in the coming months by agreeing to this amendment but he is not doing it. He shakes his head, but of course he could. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, referred to the emergency situation during Covid. This is an emergency situation. Of course he could if he wanted to. The constitutional right to private property is mitigated by the principles of social justice, as he knows, and the common good. In this case, I challenge the Minister to introduce it as we have put forward here. I challenge him to implement that and see what landlord is going to come forward, bring it to court and see if it does not stand up. The Minister will not do that just like the Government will not have a referendum to hold a right to housing to make housing a human right because it does not believe that it is a human right. As I said earlier, it is willingly accepting homelessness and levels of homelessness that are absolutely intolerable and has done for years. I do not see it as normal or acceptable for a child being homeless, but the Minister does despite his claims to contrary. If he did not, he would implement a no-fault eviction ban that would prevent thousands of families and their children becoming homeless. The homeless figures that we get each month are only the tip of the iceberg. Thousands more are being made homeless but going into situations of hidden homelessness. Deputy Boyd Barrett was right to outline the human cost of this and what the human reality is, which I also spoke about earlier. What is really sad right now is that we do not talk about the children anymore. We do not talk about the situations in Temple Street that I spoke about years ago where the doctors explained that they were seeing and are continuing to see, but no one talks about it, children presenting with their families with burns because they were in cramped emergency accommodation pulling kettles down on themselves. Babies were not learning to crawl because literally the space is not there. It is still going on. There are children right now in hotels, hostels and family hubs whose lives are being irreparably damaged by growing up in emergency accommodation. That is an emergency. That is the experience of thousands of children. I cannot get my head around how the Government will not implement a measure that it knows would prevent that for more children. The homeless services say that the eviction ban did prevent people going into homelessness and opened up a space where they could then work on getting those in emergency accommodation out. They were not dealing with a constant flow in of homelessness. That is one of the really frustrating aspects of the Bill. The Minister said the security of tenure this is going to introduce is historic and huge. As I have said over and over, it does nothing for the hundreds of thousands of existing renters. Yet the Minister could do it. He could accept this amendment. It is so frustrating to be here knowing that he could do something that would prevent homelessness, but he will not do it. It is a disgrace. It makes hollow all these claims he has made that he cares about homelessness, and he is treating it as an emergency. No, he is not. To treat it as an emergency would be to implement a no-fault eviction ban across the board. He said that landlords will flee and more landlords will sell up. If there was a no-fault eviction ban and a landlord did sell up, the family or individual would still be there. They could sell their property as they do in other countries, such as Belgium. Why will the Minister not do that? It is because he will not step up and state, "We believe housing is a human right. This is an emergency. We will take these measures." The Government is introducing a Bill that still very much does not addressing fundamental causes of our housing and homelessness crisis. We will continue to see it. Instead, the Government is going to make it much worse with higher rents.
Sentiment score: -0.15