Eoin Ó Broin
Dublin Mid-West · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“It is disappointing that, when several journalists have contacted the Government and the Department looking to confirm on the record that HAP and RAS tenants are not included - we know that they are not - and set out why and if that will be reconsidered, instead of giving a straight answer that, yes, they have been excluded, and explainin…”
“Will it try to remove survivors when they chain themselves to the gates in protest, as they have said they will, or will it finally listen to them and hear their calls for respect, justice and truth? Will it buy the Bessborough site and stop this outrage from happening?”
“According to the latest summary of social housing needs assessments, 61,000 households are on council waiting lists, although we know a large number of them are single people. About 49,000 households at the end of last year were on HAP, while there were about 7,500 private sector RAS recipients of the 14,000.”
“We are setting out five specific sets of circumstances where that would be permissible. Under our scheme, the person moving from Youghal to Clonakilty would have to have a specific reason like taking up a job or education in Clonakilty or accessing long-term medical treatment, etc.”
“First, importantly it would be for both people on the list and people in receipt of social housing support, such as HAP and RAS. It is not just the 61,000 households on our council lists but also the 55,000 or so households in HAP or private sector RAS.”
“Sure. I thank the Minister of State for his reply. My natural disposition as a person is to treat people at face value, but ten years in this House has made a bit of a cynic of me.”
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“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been in government for ten years, first through a confidence and supply arrangement in 2016 and then in two formal coalition Governments. During that decade, 55,000 adults have been forced into homelessness. Let that sink in for a second. According to data from the Department of housing, from January 2016 to June 2025, 55,000 adults have been forced into emergency accommodation, funded by the Minister of State's Department. That is more than the entire population of Longford. It is more than the entire population of Drogheda, the smallest city in the country. It is more than it would take to fill the entire Aviva Stadium for any sell-out event. That figure does not even include children.”
“In our view the rationale for exempted development regulations from 2022 and 2023 no longer exists. Those regulations need to be repealed and all existing and new centres that are going to be permanent need to go through the proper planning process. On that basis, we tabled the Bill today to achieve that end.”
“Sinn Féin believes the provision of accommodation for people either in receipt of temporary protection or applying for international protection should be provided by the State in a manner that is cost-effective for the taxpayer and fully compliant with the human rights requirements of the people in that accommodation. Sinn Féin, in particular my colleague Deputy Matt Carthy, has been urging the Government to move away from expensive, inadequate, private temporary accommodation. Certainly, at a rhetorical level, the Government has accepted that. If we are moving to having private accommodation, it needs to go through the planning process properly. We need to have thoughtful consideration of applications, proper public participation and good-quality developments.”
“As the Minister of State will know, in my constituency, despite concerted attempts by South Dublin County Council to make the former SIAC building fire compliant, the owner of that building put the well-being and lives of 186 and international protection recipients at risk by non-compliance with fire safety, ultimately forcing the council to have the building evacuated for it to be remediated. That is a consequence of the improper use of exempted development regulations. Since then, things have changed. The emergency crisis that was in evidence in 2022 and 2023 is no longer the case.”
“In 2022 and 2023, two sets of exempted development regulations were introduced to facilitate the provision of temporary accommodation for people in receipt of temporary protection or seeking international protection. The context, of course, was Russia's completely unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine and the refugee crisis that provoked, as well as an increase in the number of people seeking international protection. There was clearly a rationale at the time for those exempted development regulations. Notwithstanding that, there was some abuse of those regulations.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to repeal the Planning and Development (Exempted Development) (No. 4) Regulations 2022 (S.I. No. 605 of 2022) and Planning and Development (Exempted Development) (No. 4) Regulations 2023 (S.I. No. 376 of 2023) related to the provision of temporary accommodation for persons seeking international protection or in receipt of temporary protection. Exempted development regulations are an important part of our planning system but they should always be the exception and not the rule. They work best when they are for small developments or indeed for developments that are temporary or are required for an emergency. As the Minister of State knows, long-term development requires proper planning, thoughtful consideration by planning professionals and adequate public participation.”
“That is why we should be doing everything in this House to ensure those artists are able to bring their creativity and art to the widest possible audience. Where better to do that than in the streets and on the gable walls of our towns and cities? I think this is a positive but measured contribution to ensuring that creativity and talent can flourish, and that everyone can enjoy and revel in the beauty of public art murals. Therefore, I am introducing the Bill today. I look forward to introducing it on Second Stage as soon as possible. Crucially, I look forward to enthusiastic support from the Government to ensure this practical step becomes part of our planning code. Our cities and towns will be all the better for it.”
“The exemption should not be available for murals during any electoral period because it is not an election campaigning tool. It also should not apply to protected structures or properties in architectural conservation or special amenity order areas. If you look around the country, you will see the quality of the work we have. I refer, for example, to the outstanding public art by Maser in Dublin, including his wonderful collaboration some years ago with Damien Dempsey. I already mentioned the two wonderful murals by Subset, the horse boy mural and the David Attenborough mural. In Cork, Asbestos has done iconic murals on housing. Caoilfhionn Hanton, who is from Waterford but now resident in Dublin, is an exemplar of the finest work we have. In fact, we are bursting at the seams with this incredible creative talent.”
“The problem is that the planning restrictions remain in place. That is a disincentive for artists to do what they are best placed to do, which is to make our cities better places to be. It is for that reason that I am introducing this legislation, the Public Art Mural (Exempted Development) Bill 2026. The Bill seeks to create a new category of exempted development which will apply to "public art murals" on private property. It is important that we have a clear framework for such an exempted category. To avail of the exemption, the artwork must have artistic or cultural merit as defined in the Arts Act 2003. The work cannot be a commercial advert as set out in the Consumer Protection Act. Crucially, it must not conflict with the Equal Status Acts 2000 to 2018.”
“The problem is that our current planning laws are too restrictive in requiring planning permission for public art murals on private property. It is interesting because when you look at the exempted development regulations, this is in stark contrast to commercial advertisements. In fact, there is a huge number of exempted development categories for ads yet severe restrictions for public art. The problem is that these restrictions have meant in the recent past, in Dublin city for example, that the local authority initiated enforcement action against some of the most iconic murals in the city, including the horse boy mural in the north inner city and the David Attenborough mural off the South Circular Road. Thankfully, due to strong campaigning and advocacy in Leinster House, those enforcement and legal actions have been withdrawn.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend Planning and Development Regulations, 2001 (S.I. No. 600 of 2001) to provide for exemptions from planning permission for certain categories of public art murals where such work has artistic or cultural merit, has the permission of the owner of the building or structure on which it is displayed, is not a commercial advertisement and does not conflict with the Equal Status Acts. Public art murals are good for our cities and towns. They transform the streetscape in many instances into beautiful, vibrant and thoughtful spaces, enhancing the urban experience for residents and visitors alike. Thankfully, we are blessed with wonderful street art in the Minister of State’s own city of Limerick, Dublin, Galway, Waterford, Cork and many other urban locations.”
“It is sensible and practical and we will seek to introduce this Bill on Second Stage as soon as possible. We look forward to the Government's support.”
“For people who get a job offer, who get an opportunity to study, who need to move to access permanent medical care or who for humanitarian or compassionate reasons need to move, a social housing passport is absolutely vital. It was in contained in the housing plans of former Ministers, Deputy Alan Kelly, Simon Coveney, and the Minister for Transport, Deputy Darragh O'Brien but it has been dropped from the current programme for Government, which is deeply regrettable. The Bill attempts to address a very practical and straightforward problem. We hope the Government will support it. It also contains an important provision, subject to negotiations between the Minister for housing here and his counterpart in the Northern Ireland Executive to explore the opportunities to operate this on an all-Ireland basis, again on the same grounds.”
“Probably one of the most significant barriers is the inability of people when their life circumstances change to be able to move from one local authority housing list to another and not be punished by losing their time on the list. The legislation we are introducing today gives the Minister for housing the power by way of regulations to introduce a social housing passport that will resolve this matter. It creates a set of circumstances whereby if somebody's life circumstances change and they need to move from one local authority to another they can move to that local authority housing list and keep their years intact. The group of people who most urgently need this change are women fleeing domestic, sexual and gender-based violence, and that is a key part of the legislation.”
“I move: That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to allow the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to introduce a social housing passport in order to allow households on social housing waiting lists, or in receipt of social housing support, to transfer their social housing file, or their social housing support, to another local authority based on criteria set out in regulations laid down by the Minister. The Government is not delivering a sufficient volume of good quality social homes. This is why people are waiting so long for the social housing allocations and why so many single people and families are homeless. The Government is also putting many other barriers in the way of people having their social housing need met.”
“The Minister is correct that they are for the tenants of larger landlords, although for many of those tenants that is currently the default position anyway, but for tenants in new tenancies of small landlords, which is currently about 44% of the market, there will still be grounds for no-fault evictions, albeit they will be slightly more restricted than before. I am not going to continue this discussion, but I would be interested to hear the Minister's view on whether a landlord who avails of that termination at the end of an existing Part 4 tenancy, pre-2022 will be able to avail of the market reset at the start of a new tenancy on foot of that eviction.”
“In terms of the landlord resetting the rent for the next tenant to market rent at the beginning, will the landlord be able to avail of that? The interesting thing about the eviction levels at the end of existing Part 4 tenancies is that when the no grounds rule was available, it was hardly ever used. Will we see a glut of landlords availing of that come 2028? Again, the legislation does not speak to it, but I am interested in the Minister's view. It also ignores the fact that someone can be evicted if they cannot afford the rent because of the rate at which it is rising and fall into arrears. That is an experience that far too many families who ended up in homelessness lived with in 2014, 2015 and 2016. No-fault evictions are not being ended for all new tenancies.”
“They are slightly more restricted, but the landlord will still be able to evict where the dwelling is needed by him or her or a more narrowly defined family member group than before to avoid undue hardship, but also in cases where the landlord has a debt discharge. There is an interesting question that I want the Minister to answer. What is status of an eviction at the end of an existing Part 4 tenancy for a tenant who has an existing Part 4 tenancy prior to June or July 2022? As he knows, those tenancies will come to the end of their first cycle in 2027 or 2028 when the landlord can issue a notice of termination on no grounds and strictly speaking under law that would not be seen as a no-fault eviction. Are those tenants protected under the Government's new rules?”
“Of course, whether those things transpire for every individual renter in the time ahead is a separate question but we will have plenty of data to deal with that. The Minister said that we are moving from a temporary situation to a permanent one. That temporary situation lasted a decade, and it is because the Government made such a mess of the rent pressure zone legislation. Just as RPZs were permanent for a decade, there is going to be further changes to this legislation because of the mess the Government is making of it. With respect to security of tenure, under section 8, there are still significant grounds for eviction for new tenants of small landlords. Are they the same as under section 34 of the current Residential Tenancies Act? They are not.”
“In the case of this significant player in the market, its turnover is about 25% of tenancies annually. It is remarkably similar to the RTB's data. This is a landlord currently operating a no-fault eviction policy and it still has a 25% turnover every year. That is one of the reasons what company through its lobbyist, Irish Institutional Property, lobbied for this. They know that once this is through, all of their rents will reset to market rent every four years. I suspect that the Minister knows that. I suspect from the conversations he has had that he is fully aware of it. The information that we put into the public domain this week and put on the Dáil record in more detail about new tenancy registration trends and the cost of the market reset is factual.”
“No, I do not, but all of those elements are going to create a situation where new rental stock will become available that will be covered by the market reset rule and tenants will be affected in their tens of thousands. I spoke with a large institutional landlord last year. This is a landlord that does not evict on sale. This is a landlord that does not evict on family member grounds. This is a landlord that will only move to evict if the tenant breaches contract. It is one of the largest institutional landlords in the State. What does the Minister think its rental turnover is every year? What does he think its rental turnover is in terms of the churn within their tenancies? Has he ever stopped to ask any of the large institutional investors that effectively currently operate a policy of no-fault evictions what their churn is?”
“I said that if these trends continue, but what is it that leads to new tenancies being created? It is not rent pressure zones, that is for sure. It is that some people in the private rental sector move out because they get social housing; it is nowhere near enough, but some. Some people move out of the private rental sector because they manage to buy a house. Other people move out of the private rental sector because they cannot afford the rent and, because of the Government's policies, they are forced to move back in with family and friends. Some people also emigrate. That frees up rental stock that other people then rent and that is going to continue. Is the Minister asking me: do I think the trends are going to continue exactly as they are?”
“In fact, my assessment of the RTB data is a very modest one. It asks a very simple question. The Government is introducing a change of policy. That change of policy will allow a landlord to reset the rent to market rent between tenancies. It is eminently reasonable to ask: how much will that reset be? The data that allow us to answer that question is from the RTB, which tells us what the current rent is and what the new market rent is in a certain location for a certain type of property. They are the facts. For the Minister to describe the facts as scaremongering when at no stage in the past six months has he put any alternative assessment into place just shows that we are correct. He also said that the assessment that the RTB's trends on registrations continue into the future is based on a no-change basis. That is not strictly correct.”
“The reason this is more like a Second Stage debate is because the Government forced us to have the Committee and Remaining Stages on the floor on the Dáil instead of us having Committee Stage as normal in a committee room where we would have had a completely different type of engagement as we always do. That was an imposition by the Government. We all wanted and argued at the Business Committee that the Committee Stage should be taken in the normal manner. For the Minister, after the Government deliberately decided that this would be the format for Committee Stage, then to criticise that format is very not credible. I am going to respond specifically to the Minister's issues because, in fact, almost everything I have said during the debate is about the amendments. He accused me of using RTB data to scaremonger.”
“While he might be hiding from the evidence, he is doing this because he has chosen to do it in full knowledge of the consequences and the cost. Shame on both the Minister and Minister of State for doing this.”
“Social media clips do not hide rising homelessness numbers. They do not hide rising rents. They do not hide a Government that continues to miss almost all of its targets. I look forward to debating the social and affordable housing output figures for 2025 when they are eventually released. I suspect the targets in that regard will have been missed as well. This is terrible legislation. It is going to have profoundly negative impacts on tens of thousands of people. The fact that the Minister cannot even acknowledge that or respond to the factual information we have put to him shows that despite my very generous colleague's assertion to the contrary, the Minister has not made any mistake at all. He is doing this deliberately. He is doing it knowingly.”
“I will tell him what happened. Homelessness rose. I know it is funny. I know the Minister of State thinks it is hilarious. As a consequence of the policies of the Minister of State's party, real people ended up in emergency accommodation who should never have ended up there. That is the consequences of what you guys do, and you are doing it again. You are doing it in a far more serious manner than you have done in a decade. That is why none of us on this side of the House will make any apologies for highlighting the real-world impacts on real people of the Government's legislation. The Government can try to distract all it wants when it comes to social media clips in a way that makes it seem as if nobody on the Government benches uses social media. The Minister seems to be getting a little better at it.”
“Eoghan Murphy made all the same promises. It is almost like Groundhog Day. What happened? Homelessness, rents and house prices rose, and the right kind of supply never materialised. The Minister's party colleague Darragh O'Brien probably made more promises than anybody else. It was a case of "Darragh gets it done", as Oliver Callan used to say in his sketches. What happened? The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, might tell us what happened while Darragh O'Brien was Minister.”
“I invite the Minister to come back in here and prove that we were wrong and that he was right. If the Minister has the courage of his convictions and if he had a credible analysis of the Bill, which he does not, he would agree to that without doubt. We cannot even get the Minister into a television studio to debate with us on any of these matters, so I doubt that he would be willing to give the time for a debate here. As the month-on-month and quarter-on-quarter figures come in, we are going to see the consequences of the Government's policy. How do we know that? We know because we have been here before. Deputy Boyd Barrett is the longest serving TD dealing with housing on the Opposition benches. I am not far behind him. Simon Coveney made all the same promises.”
“Therefore, the idea that somehow the completion figures, including those relating to apartments, for the end of last year are in any way is a justification for what is happening is simply unbelievable. I am going to make a wager. In six months, let us come back and have a debate on the impact of this Bill. In 12 months, if the Minister is still in office, he should come back in here and we will have a debate. Schedule such a debate and allocate Government time.”
“I would have thought that the Minister would at least have been honest enough to say that the primary purpose of the Bill is to allow rents to rise. That the Government has made a calculated assessment in order to attract a certain category of institutional investment, that those involved want rental yields even greater than what the new private sector stock is getting now and that the Government has said "That is no problem. Off you go." The Minister is right that there was an increase in the number of apartment completions last year. Almost all of those apartments were bought by the State. Virtually no new private sector investment acquired any of them.”
“I would happily give the Minister an hour of my speaking time because I would love him to outline the analysis of this that allows him to shake his head. His officials told us that they were not asked to produce any analysis to underpin this Bill. The Housing Agency was not asked to produce any analysis to underpin this Bill either. None of the academic experts in our universities who specialise in the private rental sector were asked to carry out an analysis. Unless the Minister has an analysis that he has been hiding from us all, then either the RTB data is correct and he must accept it and live by it or he has to produce something else. We are going to go through other aspects of the Bill as we proceed.”
“The greatest driver of homelessness is the failure of the State over the past number of decades, including under this Government, to deliver a volume of social homes to meet the needs of people who need social housing. The lack of such homes forces people into the private rental sector for extended periods. When they eventually become homeless, they remain in emergency accommodation for far too long. Again, this is because of the Government's failure to provide adequate social housing. There are plenty of solutions on this side of this House. However, what the Minister has ignored and has tacitly accepted is that tens of thousands of renters in new tenancies from the start of March are going to be hit with rent increases of the order of €3,000 to €5,000 annually. That is what the data from the Residential Tenancies Board indicates.”
“What the Government completely ignores in this regard is the RTB data I quoted at the outset to the effect that for every quarter for the past two and half years, 25% of all registered tenancies have been new first-time tenancies. The private rental sector is in a state of constant churn for a variety of reasons. If those trends continue, within four years, almost all tenants in the private rental sector will be captured by the market reset. Ultimately, some will not be captured until year six, but that is what the Government is proposing. It has been stated that the greatest driver of homeless is the crisis in the private rental sector. In fact, that is not strictly true.”
“In fact, I have probably spent more time talking about alternative and better forms of private sector investment than the Minister. The missing piece of our private sector housing crisis is not high-end, high-density, high-cost private rental. That is not our problem. The missing part is a failure on the part of the Government to support and activate the small and medium-sized builder-developer sector to build significantly more good-quality private homes at more moderated prices in every county in the State. The Government could deal with that by fixing the problems facing the sector. Action in that regard is entirely absent. The Minister repeated a line used by the Taoiseach to the effect that the 240,000 tenancies currently in place will not be impacted.”
“That is what the Government is proposing. If the Minister is right and this leads to an increase in supply at some point - let us imagine that thesis is correct - who made him to think that it is acceptable for renters to have to pay the extortionate rents necessary to bring about that increase? It beggars belief that the Minister cannot be at least honest and say in order to attract the very specific kind of institutional investment that the Government believes is necessary, it is going to have to have ever greater rip-off rents which, like existing rents, people simply cannot afford. I will come to the alternative and to private sector investment in a moment The Minister also likes to say that people on this side of this House have nothing to say about private sector investment.”
“I am quite happy to engage. If this was a proper Committee Stage debate, we would be able to have these types of engagements. That is one of the things we have been denied. Let us be very clear. Double-digit rental inflation leaves renters unable to pay their rent. They get into rent arrears, they get a notice of termination for non-payment of rent and they get evicted. That is what happens. What is the Government proposing for new renters in County Carlow? Potential rent increases in the first year of 29%. For County Cavan, it is 29%. For County Clare, it is 26.9%. For Cork, including the county, it is 25%. The figure for the city is 20%. It goes on and on. In the context of the market reset, not a single county or city will have a rent increase in the first year of less than 17% or 18%. For some, it will be as high as 35%.”
“If somebody enters into a tenancy at the new market rent and is then hit with 2% or CPI each year, whichever the lowest, and if at any point in the following five years or six years they fall into rent arrears, they will be evicted. The Minister of State is smirking at that remark. Maybe he was not here in this House, when in 2014, 2015 and 2016 huge numbers of families were evicted from their homes because they could not afford double-digit rent increases. That was the reality. That is what drove family homelessness right across this State in those years. If the Minister of State thinks that is funny or something to smirk about, that is okay-----”
“The Residential Tenancies Act 2004 involved an element of security of tenure, but there were so many loopholes that many tenants were left behind. Darragh O'Brien's tenancies of indefinite duration had so many loopholes that the same thing happened. Let us look at the Minister's proposals here. New tenants in properties owned by small landlords can still be evicted if the landlord or a spouse needs the property. They can still be evicted on the grounds of financial hardship, ill-defined as it is, or in the context of the need to discharge a debt. Here is the really important one that the Minister did not mention. They can be evicted if they cannot afford the rent. That ground remains in place.”
“This is despite the fact that this State has more money than ever before and a capacity to deliver. The Minister also accused us of protecting existing renters. Some 20,000 existing renters get notices of termination every year. These people are now going to have to find other rental accommodation. As a consequence, they will have to pay additional rent. What is happening simply makes no sense. A claim has been made to the effect that security of tenure is being introduced for the first time. Darragh O'Brien came in here in 2023 and said he was introducing tenancies of indefinite duration. He misled this House, because they were not indefinite. Likewise, the Minister is not for the first time introducing security of tenure.”
“It will increase some level of supply in certain parts of Dublin and Cork but nowhere else. The cost of that supply is going to be so expensive that the working people many of us represent will not be able to afford it. We need to increase supply and we need to increase social supply. The Government keeps trotting out the line about building more social homes than at any time since the 1970s. In the 1970s, the population of the country was half what it is now. Our social housing waiting lists were a fraction of what they are today. If we make an honest assessment between the position now and that which obtained in the 1970s, we can see that we are delivering less than half of what was delivered then per capita and even less in proportion to need.”
“The very particular category of institutional investors that the Minister is talking about are not coming to County Cork or County Wexford anytime soon. I want to rebut the Minister's assertion. We are here dealing with his legislation. If he wants to have a debate about our solutions, that is fine. We will do it any day he likes, but I will deal with some of them now. This is the Committee Stage debate on the Government's legislation and impact it is going to have on real people in real time in the months ahead. The Minister keeps saying that this rent hike Bill, coupled with the reduction in apartment design standards and the massive tax break for apartment builders is going to lead to a dramatic increase in supply. I have not heard anybody in the industry say that.”
“The Minister of State knows that the only investors who are interested in these kinds of rents are those - the Minister of State was not here earlier so I will repeat it for his benefit - who might invest in the docklands area of Cork and in very high-end, high-cost parts of Dublin. The Minister and the Minister of State are going to ask their constituents to pay somewhere in the region of an extra €3,000 per year for new tenancies. The Minister had an opportunity to dispute the RTB data and he chose not to. If he wants to dispute it, I will be more than interested in hearing his analysis. The Minister and the Minister of State are going to ask new renters in their constituencies to be pay additional rent of in the region of €3,000 per year in the absence of extra supply in those constituencies.”
“I know it might be difficult to hear the real-world financial consequences of what he will be voting for, but in Cork, the extra rent that will be imposed on new tenancies from 1 March in a year will be €3,100 across the city and county. In the city specifically, it will be almost €4,000. I will ask the Minister a very simple question. How is increasing rents in every county in the State going to contribute to increasing the kind of supply needed in every county? Is the Minister of State seriously suggesting that incentivising private institutional investors with record rents will lead to the delivery of apartments to meet the needs of his constituents in County Cork? Of course it will not.”
“It will mean an average of an extra €3,000 a month. In the Minister's constituency, it will be a little lower, at €2,500 a year. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan has joined us. In his country of Cork, what he will be voting in favour of this evening, based on the data from the Residential Tenancies Board-----”
“Sometimes, what the Minister does not say is more revealing than what he does say. I stated earlier that on the basis of data from the Residential Tenancies Board, within 12 months of the enactment of this Bill, anywhere in the region of 60,000 households will be impacted by the market reset. The Minister has not challenged that. In any of the radio or TV debates I have taken part in, nobody has challenged it. This means that the Minister is accepting the RTB's data that over the next 12 months at least 60,000 households - single people, families and children - will be impacted by his decision. The other interesting thing that the Minister did not respond to is the analysis of the Residential Tenancies Board's data actually detailing the increase in rent for those households in the coming months.”
“I am very interested in hearing the Minister's response to what I have said and I will continue the debate. Without doubt, this will be remembered as one of the worst interventions in the private rental market in recent history and it will be the name of the Minister, Deputy James Browne, that will be associated with it.”
“This is what the Minister will be remembered for. The legacy he is going to leave is higher and ever-increasing rents, far greater financial pressure on renters, rising levels of homelessness and a security of tenure regime, which I will put money on today we will be back here about in two, three or four years' time. Whoever replaces the Minister for the mess he will have left will be trying to undo and unpick this, just as we stood here with Simon Coveney in 2016 and pleaded with him to do it properly, do it right, listen to the experts and to those people who know better. He ignored us, Eoghan Murphy ignored us, Darragh O'Brien ignored us and now the Minister is ignoring us. The consequence will be more housing failure. There are eminently sensible amendments. I am happy to support them.”
“The Minister will accuse me of personalising it when I do this at some later stage, but that means he is directly responsible, by the actions and legislation he is promoting, securing Cabinet approval for and getting the approval of backbenchers, for all of that. It will push up rents and will not increase supply to any significant level. Where it does result in increased supply, it will be expensive and inappropriate and will lead to increased levels of homelessness. The Government is introducing a security of tenure regime that is so complex it will be very difficult to explain, even harder to understand and virtually impossible to enforce. I have been here for a decade and I have seen some pretty politically shabby pieces of rent reform in terms of what the Government asked officials to do. This is by far the worst in a decade.”
“Today, the gap between HAP and new rents is already too great for the vast majority of those people. If another €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000 is added on to those new rents, it is game over. Why would the Minister, a year into his job, when child and family homelessness is rising, introduce a policy that every single policy expert, front-line homeless service provider and anybody who can count is telling him will increase and accelerate the rate at which families with children will be in homelessness? We will all stand here, month after month, and remind the Government that it took this decision. It took a decision to allow market rents to increase to double digits. As a consequence of that, people who desperately need private rental cannot get it and are pushed into homelessness.”