I am not quite sure whether the Minister genuinely believes what he is setting out and has been saying in public. Let us explain honestly what the Minister is doing. With regard to the claim that renters will get certainty from this Bill, the truth, no matter what way he tries to spin it, is that the only certainty it gives existing renters, the 250,000 households renting right now, is that their current tenancies will continue into the future with the same threat of eviction as exists today. They get no new security of tenure. Yes, rents will remain capped at 2% per year but they will get no new existing security of tenure. There is this spinning that this is a Bill that will give renters greater security, but all existing tenants will get no greater security. The Minister is being dishonest and misleading in claiming and stating publicly that this Bill gives renters greater security of tenure. To existing renters, all of those who are in their homes, they get no extra security of tenure. The certainty they get is the continued threat of eviction. They get no new protection. What will new renters - those who take up new tenancies - get? They get the certainty of permanently higher rents. First, when they take up a new place, the previous 2% inter-tenancy rent cap from the previous tenant is being removed and landlords will be able to increase the rent where there has not been a no-fault eviction, which is in the overwhelming majority of cases. They will be able to put the rent at market rent, meaning all new renters taking up new tenancies will face higher rents. They will face market rents. Will the Minister at least have the decency and honesty to admit that? What renters are going to face is market rents. On top of that, when they take up the new tenancy, within six years they will face an increase in rent to market rents. Currently, for existing tenants, it is 2% per year. There is no point at which their rent can be reset to market rent. Under the new proposals in this legislation, however, for new tenancies that renters take up, landlords will be able to reset their rent to market rent every six years. We know what market rent is; it is absolutely unaffordable, extortionate rent. What will it be in six years’ time? I say to the people of Ireland and the public today that if the Social Democrats are in government in four or five years’ time after the next election, we will make sure to change it so that they will not face that market reset of rents. What is set out here is a recipe for the disaster and catastrophe in housing to become even worse. It is a recipe for rising homelessness. That is what this Bill is. It will cause increased homelessness in two ways. First, it does nothing to prevent the ongoing tsunami of homelessness and the thousands of evictions of existing renters. It does nothing to increase security of tenure for them. Second, when renters are evicted and they try to find somewhere else, there will be nowhere to go because everything will have been brought up to market rents. The Minister set it out very clearly. He says that, on the one hand, the Government recognises that rents are very high. It is great that it does, but it will allow them to go even higher. What is it going to do? When a new tenancy lasts for over six years, the landlord will be allowed to reset the rent to market rent at the end of each six-year period. The Minister said that he does not want rents for long-term tenancies to fall behind market rents. He wants all renters to be paying the market rent. Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of renters who are paying below the market rent. In some cases, it is an affordable rent and, in other cases, it is a higher rent, but it is not the market rent. This Bill – the Minister said it very straight and plainly – is a Bill to bring all rents up to market rent, which is absolutely unaffordable. It is wrong and it will be deeply damaging for many people in this country. The Minister wants renters to be paying market rents. Of course, the assumption and market theory justifying the Bill, one which the Housing Agency set out as well and with which I disagree, is that we allow rents to increase and then we will see an increase in institutional investment and more funds will come in. That will then lead to a supply that will, at some point in the future, lead to lower rents. Dr. Lorcan Sirr set out before the housing committee clearly that this assumption and theory has no foundation. As he set out, the theory is that the increased supply we are looking for is going to bring down rents, but no one can ever say when. The Minister will not say when rents will come down as a result of these rent increases. Dr. Sirr said: In my history, and from looking at my trends, charts and data, it has never happened yet because the quantity that we would need to bring down rents is so great that it is never going to happen. What institutional investor is going to build apartments that are going to bring down rents? It is a flawed assumption. It is a flawed theory. It is based on free market economic theory that does not work in the context of housing. We know it does not. What developer or investor is going to build the unit that will lead to lower prices and rents? It is not true. We know very clearly why this Bill has been introduced. This is a Bill that was pushed for by institutional investors, particularly by Irish Institutional Property. Mr. Pat Farrell, former Fianna Fáil chairperson and Senator, leads Irish Institutional Property and he has had multiple meetings with the Minister and his predecessor. Meeting after meeting with Department officials and the Minister are set out in the lobbying register. The relevant matter is that Pat Farrell of Irish Institutional Property, formerly a designated public official, DPO, and Member of the Seanad, met David Kelly, an assistant secretary in the Department of housing. What was the intended result? The intended result, which was set out on the lobbying register, was to "inform public policy review on rent regulation having regard to published [institutional investment policy] priorities". What does that mean? It means what he said in May last year, as was reported in the Business Post. Pat Farrell of Irish Institutional Property said that rent caps had stalled equity into Ireland, as the rate of return on investment was not lucrative enough for the build-to-rent sector. He said the rental cap policy has been "disastrous" and needs to be lifted. The Minister can dress it up any way he wants. The reality is that he is lifting these rent caps for the institutional investors so that they will increase supply, which will, at some mythical point in the future, lead to lower rents. It is not going to lead to lower rents, and the Minister knows that. He should at least have the honesty to admit that. They are, as the Minister set out in his statement, going to lead to all rents being brought up to market rent level. For what? Is it so that we can have more box units at €3,000 or €3,500 per month? What are those rents going to be in two or three years' time? Will they be €4,000 per month? Who can afford these rents? It is not economically sustainable. Fianna Fáil is bringing us back to another property crash and another financial crash through unsustainable rents, just as there were unsustainable house prices in the past. Who is it for? Who is going to pay for it? That is a question the Taoiseach and the Minister do not address. Who are going to pay the rents? Young people at the moment are stuck in box rooms. Are they going to move out and pay €3,500 or €4,000 per month? They are not going to do it. They will still be stuck in the box room. People will be in overcrowded situations. People will be spending all their income on rent. What nurse, garda or teacher will be able to afford these rents? They cannot afford the rents as they are. How are they going to afford higher rents? What has happened is that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been captured by institutional investors into thinking that this is the solution. I believe they are making a political calculation that is about units and not homes. The Government is lauding this increase in the number of units built last year. The Minister set this out himself. Where was the majority of unit increases? It was in apartments. Who is buying apartments? What household or young person is buying apartments? None of them are doing so. None of those units are for sale. They are all build-to-rent and with rents that no one can afford. What does the Government want? Is it more apartment blocks for which no one can afford the rent? That is not sustainable. They are not homes for people. The Social Democrats have set out alternative policies, even though the Minister denies it. The Taoiseach says that there are no solutions, that nobody else is putting forward solutions and that we need to rely on the private market and institutional investors. We do not. That is one of the most frustrating things. The Government does not believe in the Irish people's capacity to solve our own crisis. Councils in the past, when this country had nothing, built public housing for people across this country. What the Government is now doing is sacrificing future generations and to making them pay rents that they will be locked into. It is going to create a permanent class of renters. It is like returning us to serfdom. It is happening not just in Ireland but in other countries. Institutional and global wealth funds want to turn younger generations into a permanent class of renters who pay an income into their pension funds and wealth funds. What the Government is doing is facilitating that. It is ironic that Fianna Fáil, supposedly the party of home ownership, is standing over the reduction in home ownership and the reduced possibility of home ownership. How are young people supposed to be able to save for a deposit when they have to pay €3,000 or €3,500 per month in rent? The Government is taking the future possibility of home ownership away from them in order to get some units on a spreadsheet so that it can say it has reached its targets or is heading close to them. It is not thinking about what is being built. Affordable housing is not being built. The Government has been captured. With this legislation, the Minister is taking a deeply disappointing measure. I do not believe it will work. We have seen that we cannot rely on global finance to deliver affordable housing, or housing full stop. At what point do those global financiers say they have enough profit or sufficient returns? It is never enough. The funds are based on every year increasing the rate of return. That is the way these funds work. Surely the Minister knows that. There is no point at which they will turn around and reduce the rents. The Minister is locking our housing system into an unaffordable supply of housing. That is fundamentally flawed. There is an alternative. We have €166 billion lying in bank accounts in this country. We could be using that to build affordable homes. We have set out a proposal today - I look forward to the Minister's response to it - for a State construction company that would build affordable and social housing at scale. We could do that. I seriously ask the Minister to reconsider at this last moment. I ask him to pull back and not introduce the aspects of this Bill that will lead to the reset to market rents. The Government is going to unleash housing misery on hundreds of thousands of people and on future renters in this country. I do not get it. The Minister knows. How are people going to be able to afford even higher rents than they are paying now? Rents will be reset year after year and tenancy after tenancy. Properties will be churned back to higher market rents. This is a completely flawed Bill in its rent increases. There are alternatives. The Social Democrats will be opposing the legislation.

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