At the outset, I want to acknowledge the death of former Minister of State and Labour TD for Waterford, Brian O’Shea. My condolences and those of the Labour Party are with his wife, Eileen, their family and with his community. Let us talk about the Taoiseach’s so-called reforms to the rental sector. He has billed the Residential Tenancies Board amendment Bill as a reset of rental protections but in reality, it is yet another chaotic intervention – the seventh rewrite of rental rules in a decade. That fact alone tells a story of its own because the relentless churn deepens instability, turbocharges rents and creates new legal loopholes and uncertainties. The Taoiseach is dressing deregulation up as reform but creating a system so opaque that nobody understands their rights. Nationwide rent pressure zones sound meaningful until you read the small print. Allowing landlords to reset rents to so-called market value between tenancies will rip up those vital protections altogether. Effectively, it is rewarding eviction. The Government’s plans are not completely meritless – we acknowledge that. It is positive to see six-year tenancies and restrictions on evictions by large landlords. Linking rent increases to inflation is better than the chaos renters face now. However, we can do so much more and we must do so much more for renters. The Labour Party believes renters deserve a freeze now to give real breathing space while prices spiral. We know the modest positive gains are overwhelmed in this Bill and by Government policy by a plan that tries to fix market failure with yet more marketisation. The Taoiseach must know this will not work. His assurances collapse under your assurances collapse under scrutiny. The proof is in the pudding and the Taoiseach’s housing pudding is inedible. Take the tenant in situ scheme. This was supposed to keep renters out of homelessness when their landlord sells but last year in the face of stalling sales under tenant in situ, the Taoiseach insisted to me that the scheme was working as planned. Now, we learn that Dublin City Council purchases under the scheme have collapsed by 70%. Just 77 homes were bought in a year. Eviction notices are landing in people's postboxes with no safety net for families. "Working as planned" really means working for nobody. We see the same pattern in social housing. Councils are increasingly taking enforcement action against developers who are breaching their legal duty to build social and affordable homes. The Taoiseach knows the Labour Party has proposed transforming the Land Development Agency into a State construction company to ensure the State can build directly for the benefit of everyone. The notion of such an initiative seems to incense the Taoiseach. Instead, his policy relies almost exclusively on private developers for the delivery of social homes. This has been expensive, inefficient and ignored. When will the Taoiseach admit that his policies on housing are failing? Will he shelve these new plans for renters and bring in real protections and real commitments for state-led delivery?
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Of private rents.
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I thank the Taoiseach for his kind words about the late Brian O’Shea. That is appreciated. I did have to laugh when the Taoiseach used the word “incoherent” about my contribution. It is his housing policy that is incoherent. It is his measures on renters that are incoherent. Let me give him two examples. In Galway this week, with our Councillor Helen Ogbu, I heard about students renting Monday to Friday in Galway city who have to move all their possessions out of their apartments on a Friday, so that their landlord can rent out the apartment on Airbnb for the weekend. Where is the coherence in that for renters? Last night viewers of “Prime Time” will have been moved by the renter, Aoife McGrath, who broke down telling the story about how she had received her third no-fault eviction notice in four years and is now in her 30s desperately seeking somewhere to live. These stories are not unique. We hear them all the time from our own constituents, from people desperately trying to find somewhere to rent. These so-called rental reforms in fact will create different classes of renters and will diminish protections for many. They lack coherence, as indeed does the Government's housing policy. When will we see real protection for renters and real delivery of homes at scale?
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Fianna Fáil delivered homes at scale through a State construction company.
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