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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“That is something that in 2011 was virtually unheard of but because of double-digit rising rents the number of families and children entering emergency accommodation rose for one reason and one reason only; an inability to pay a legally sanctioned rent increase from the Government, which forced them into homelessness. It was double-digit rental inflation. Rent pressure zones put some level of pause on that, but what the Government is proposing here is to go back to double-digit rental inflation. Deputy Boyd Barrett made a point that has to be emphasised over and over again. Last year, about 20,000 eviction notices or notices of termination were issued. Many of the people who got those notices were waiting incredibly long periods for social housing. Their rent was subsidised by the housing assistance payment, HAP.”
“It is almost as if the Minister has forgotten why rent pressure zones were introduced in the first place. I was never a supporter of rent pressure zones. I sat up there and argued tooth and nail that Simon Coveney was getting it wrong and tabled amendments that the Government would not accept. Much of our criticisms of the rent pressure zones - many of us voted against them in the end - came to pass. They provided modest protection for some but you could not have made a bigger hames of rent regulation than Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil at the time. The reason rent pressure zones were introduced was that from 2014 to 2016 a new phenomenon had entered our housing system: child and family homelessness.”
“First, under Part 4 of the Residential Tenancies Act, we already have six-year tenancies. They used to be for four years and are now for six; they already exist. Second, existing tenants who remain in their current properties, and Deputy Hearne made this point on Second Stage, get no benefit. New tenants of small landlords can still be evicted during that six-year period. There is a bit of a restriction, but there are still three significant grounds upon which notice of termination can be provided. For large landlords, the Government is finally putting on the Statute Book what already exists in practice, which is institutional investors only evicting for breach of contract. The problem is, and this relates directly back to these amendments, what value is security of tenure if people cannot afford the rent?”
“I do not think anybody elected him or me to advocate for that, but that is what he is voting for here tonight. This will not increase supply in the places it is needed. Where it does increase supply, it will be exceptionally expensive. Meanwhile, the lower cost rental, along with the under-provision of social and affordable and private for-purchase homes, will dissipate. I will make a final point on these amendments. Every time I am in a debate on these matters with somebody from the Government, the last thing they want to talk about are rents because God forbid we talk about the centrepiece of the legislation. Instead, what the Government keeps talking about is that it is giving people real security of tenure and new shiny six-year tenancies where they cannot be evicted.”
“As we know, because there continues to be an exit of small, semi-professional accidental landlords from the market, for a range of reasons, some of which is dissatisfaction with Government policy, the lower end and lower priced private rental stock will continue to deplete. The only new stock, if we get any significant increase at all, will be high end, high density and high cost. Investors will not be building anything in the Minister's constituency or anything in Limerick. They might build something in the docklands of Cork, in the constituency of the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, but I do not think the hard-working constituents he well-represents at our committee when we talk about affordable homes think that €3,000 a month is affordable for a standard 70 sq. m one-bedroom in the centre of Cork.”
“In fact, the way the Government is designing this means that not only will new tenants in existing rental stock be hit with a market reset, in most cases, at the start and near the end, but for new apartment stock, that will not even be constrained by the rent pressure zones in between. It will be the CPI. It will be the most aggressive form of inflation possible. If I were an institutional investor - thankfully, I am not - the Government is guaranteeing me perpetually increasing rents irrespective of what happens for new and sitting tenants, which is something it is also permitting for new student-specific accommodation. Locked into its formula here is an incentive for those investors to continue to increase rents.”
“The primary approach to increasing supply from this Government is to incentivise large institutional investors from the global markets to come to Ireland and build high-density apartment schemes because, as supply goes up, then, over time, rents will moderate. What utter rubbish. The reason we know it is rubbish is because there is no analysis anywhere, either produced by the Department or anyone else, that tells us that if you increase institutional investment to the high end of the market, high density and high price, it will have any impact on price other than perpetually increasing rent. It is economic absurdity, yet the Minister repeats it as if it is some kind of empirical fact. If he really believes it, he should publish the evidence. Get a bunch of housing and economic experts to produce a report and put it on the table.”
“The summary consequence of this proposal, which these amendments are trying to get to the bottom of, is that somewhere in the region of 60,000 households - singles, couples, families - over the next 12 months, will be asked by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Lowry and Healy-Rae Independents to pay rent increases in the order of €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000. When you strip it all away, that is what is in front of us. That is why I think these amendments are enormously important. They are asking the Minister to do something he should have done and should have published previously. You might ask why are you so intent on imposing so much hardship on these renters. The Minister has given us the answer. I am sure he will repeat it again today. He will say the only way we can tackle the housing crisis is if we increase supply.”
“We also know that students, the overwhelming majority of whom do not live in the student-specific accommodation sector but rather live in the private rental sector, typically speaking on nine-month leases not 12 months, come September, are going to get hit substantially again and again. That means, for example, families from the western seaboard, from Donegal, the north west, etc., who do not have significant university places close to them, are going to be hit by phenomenally greater rent increases. We will talk about the mess the Government is making of the student-specific sector later. The summary is as follows. I have been saying this all week, and it is really interesting because nobody in the Government has responded to this.”
“Before we have a conversation, and we will have that conversation today, about supply or tenure - because in both of those, the Minister's arguments are very questionable - the facts, as evidenced by the Residential Tenancies Board in its registration and rent data, is that if this Bill goes through tonight, into the Seanad tomorrow and passed next week, new renters in new tenancies will be facing potential rent increases in the order of 20%, 25% or 30% more - €2,000, €3,000, €4,000 or, in the case of Galway, €5,000. The Minister has to ask himself what he has against renters. Does he really think renters have that kind of money to pay that extra? We know with data from the ESRI that renters, typically speaking - not exclusively, but typically speaking - have lower incomes. These are the people least able to pay the additional charges.”
“I am sure when she is out in her constituency she will be told it is huge sum of money for a young couple trying to rent to save for a home or for a modest income working person to pay. What about Wicklow? Wicklow will be €4,000. Leitrim will be €3,000. The single biggest uplift, the city that is going to expose renters to the greatest level of additional rent over 12 months, is Galway city at €5,000.”
“I appreciate that might come as a surprise or shock to the Minister of State, but is it not utterly bizarre that an Opposition Member using RTB figures has to stand on this side of the Chamber five or six months after this was proposed and it may be the first time he is being told the actual impact on the people he claims to represent? Waterford City is in a similar region as well. Let us look at Wexford, a Cheann Comhairle, because it is important we all know the impact of this. I know she is neutral and not involved in this, but the uplift is 21% higher rent than they would otherwise be paying as a consequence of this Bill. That is an extra €2,532 a year.”
“When you start to look at the county breakdowns, this is where it starts to get really interesting. The county-by-county and city breakdowns are utterly staggering. Limerick City, the Minister of State's constituency, will have one of the potentially highest market reset rates in the State at roughly €4,000. What the Minister of State is going to vote for tonight is that renters in his constituency, if they start a new tenancy from the beginning of March, could, over the next 12 months, on the basis of the RTB figures, face €4,000 a year more than under the current regime.”
“That means, on a spreadsheet, you can set out rents for existing renters, rents for new renters, look at the difference and that will give you a pretty reasonable estimation of the potential increased rent from the market reset. In fact, that data is from quarter 2 of 2025, which means the scale of the uplift is likely to be much greater. What is the answer to the question? Based on the RTB's overall data, anybody hit with the market reset from March is likely to be paying at a minimum 17% more rent than they would have otherwise. That is a significant amount of money. That averages to about €3,000 of additional rent in a year. What the Minister is asking us to vote for is for those people who start new tenancies from March of this year to be paying at a minimum €3,000 more a year.”
“How much extra rent are Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Lowry and Healy-Rae Independents allowing landlords to charge from that market reset? I appreciate this is going to be uncomfortable listening for some folks on the other side of the Chamber but it is important that we have it on the record. In order to determine or try to work out what the likely cost is, we also have really helpful data from the Residential Tenancies Board every single quarter. Over the last two and a half years, it tells us, Statewide, regionally and in every county, including the Ceann Comhairle's, the Minister's and mine, what rents are being charged on average for existing renters and what the new rents are.”
“That proposition is supported by the Residential Tenancies Board's other important piece of information that the average length of a tenancy is about three and a half years. The first thing to say is that we are looking at, from March through to the end of this year and into next year, tens of thousands renters whom the Minister and his Minister of State, and my colleague, Deputy McGrath from the housing committee, are going to expose to the market reset. That is an indisputable fact. Sure, the changes may result in some changes in patterns and levels of churn, but it is likely they will be minimal. That means huge numbers of people will be impacted by this month on month from March. It leads us to the next question directly related to the three amendments before us. What is that likely to cost?”
“Thankfully, the Residential Tenancies Board, over the last two and a half years, produced quarterly data looking at renewed tenancies and new tenancies. We start to get a picture of quarter on quarter, how many new first-time tenancies are created. The dataset is over two and a half years, so it gives us a good picture of what the trends are. The straight answer is, on average, every quarter, 25% or more of registered tenancies are new first-time tenancies. That equates in the last four quarters to over 60,000 new tenancies. Some are single people, some are couples and some are families with children. That means, if those trends continue, the potential number of new first-time tenants impacted by the market reset is somewhere in the region of 60,000 if trends continue.”
“Thankfully, even though the Minister did not think this was important information to have before bringing such radical proposals to Cabinet, the Residential Tenancies Board publishes the data that anybody with a little bit of time and a spreadsheet can understand. I would like to put on the record of the House the answers to those questions which these amendments are seeking the Minister to provide, which the Minister should have assessed and provided for himself, his Government colleagues and our committee prior to the passage of the legislation, but it is important that we hear it today. Question one is how many tenants, people or households is the market reset likely to impact month on month from March?”
“If the previous tenant left voluntarily or as a result of breach of contract, that market reset will start at the beginning of that tenancy and for all categories of tenant it will be repeated every six years. One would have thought, given the significance of that change, the Department might want to know the answer to two questions. First, how many people is that likely to impact in the first month, six months, 12 months, etc. The second question one would have thought a Minister who is interested in the impact of his legislation on renters would ask is how much extra they are going to pay. They are pretty reasonable questions which these amendments are putting to the Minister, albeit in retrospect because that is all we can do.”
“They have been ruled out of order and I fully accept the decision of the Ceann Comhairle but they are similar in intention to these amendments. For me, one of the really shocking things when we dealt with the legislation at pre-legislative scrutiny is that when we inquired as to whether there had been any attempt by the Department to make an assessment of the impact of the provisions of this Bill on the rents that renters pay, the answer was "No". That is an astounding omission on behalf of Government and here is the reason for that. At the very centre of this Bill, the most significant and controversial aspect is the market reset provision that will, from 1 March this year, allow a landlord to reset the market rent when a new tenant moves in.”
“If this becomes the way in which he does his business, it will make the job of those of us on the Oireachtas housing committee who take our jobs as legislators seriously much more difficult. Specifically, with respect to the amendments requiring the Minister to bring forward a number of reports, there is a continuity between the three amendments because they all call for reports related to affordability of rents now but also affordability as a consequence of the changes the Government is making. I have tabled a number of amendments that are similar to amendment No. 1 in particular, to which Deputy Boyd Barrett referred earlier, to try to delay the passage of the Bill until such reports were produced.”
“The Government is going to make the most substantial change to the regulation of the private rental sector in over a decade in the space of ten hours when includes the time spent on the Bill last week and this week and whatever time it will get in the Seanad next week. Of course, the problem with that is not only is there a lack of scrutiny and a lack of media and public attention, it also means that whatever the Government's intentions, the negative consequences of the legislation are probably going to be even worse. Again, there are some specific instances in which I will raise that. I put on record my strong objection to how the Minister has proceeded with this.”
“This is a truly appalling way to make legislation. One can always tell when a government is embarrassed by its own proposals. One can always tell when a government is anxious that the public who are affected by its legislation get as little opportunity as possible to hear about those changes until it is too late by government rushing through legislation in impossibly short periods of time. The Bill before us is not simple. It is not straightforward, as we will discuss throughout the evening, and it is going to profoundly impact the lives of tens of thousands of people. Yet, we are being given an entirely inadequate Committee Stage opportunity. In effect, there will be no Report and Final Stages.”
“I will speak in support of this group of amendments, amendments Nos. 2, 7 and 8. I will explain the detailed reasons for that in a moment. I will start, however, with two small pieces of housekeeping. First, I acknowledge the very helpful role of the departmental officials. They have obviously been working on this Bill in a relatively short period of time and at any stage when either we or our committee sought additional information they have been very obliging in making sure we were facilitated in trying to understand the legislation. I wish to make clear that the criticisms I am going to make of this legislation are political criticisms directed at the Minister and the Government and not at the hard-working officials who are often put in very difficult positions producing complex legislation in short periods of time.”
“On those grounds, the fact that, because institutional investors have demanded it of him, he is going to allow 60,000 renters pay thousands of euro extra in rent every year is the reason we will oppose this Bill, today, tomorrow and every other day in the short time he is giving us to deal with it here in the Oireachtas.”
“The Minister should be here in front of us today introducing legislation to cut and freeze rents, introducing budgets to dramatically increase and accelerate the delivery of social and genuinely affordable homes and supporting proposals from Sinn Féin and others to activate the small and medium-sized private residential development sector to deliver more good quality homes for working people to buy but, instead, he is shafting renters and lining the pockets of big institutional investors and large corporate landlords. For the Minister not even to acknowledge the dramatic impact that the market reset is going to have on tens of thousands of renters is, quite frankly, not only dishonest but shameful.”
“I accept we will get some increase in high-end, high-density, high-rental accommodation in parts of Dublin and maybe the docklands of Cork but it is not going to increase the supply of social, affordable or privately owned homes and it is certainly not going to reduce rents in the short, medium or long term. The only guarantee from this legislation is rip-off rents are going to be hiked ever higher for an ever greater number of renters, many of whom cannot afford them. Of course, there is an alternative.”
“The tenure rules are being opposed by small and medium sized landlords. It appears that even some builders are unhappy with the proposals. That begs the question: why has the Minister done this? Why is this even in front of us today? The answer is very simple - it is because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, along with their Independent supporters, have been captured by the big institutional investors. The funds lobbied aggressively for the market reset and when the funds tell Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael to jump, their parties ask "How high?" That is exactly what has happened in this instance. The tragedy of this is that they have been sold a pup. Contrary to what the Minister claims, this legislation is not going to see a significant increase in investment or in the delivery of private rental sector homes.”
“For the percentage of landlords out there who will break the rules or play fast and loose with the rules, this will make their job much easier. Of course, none of this should surprise us. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have an incredibly bad track record when it comes to regulating the private rental sector. They blocked rent certainty in 2015. They made a mess of rent caps in 2016. Over the past decade they have introduced a dizzying array of changes to the Residential Tenancies Act. They ended the ban on no-fault evictions in 2023. That is the reason our private rental sector is so damn dysfunctional. It is because of those parties and their bad policies. The Bill before us today is no different. Their rent-setting proposals have been sharply criticised by tenants' advocates.”
“I accept that tenants in properties owned by larger landlords will have increased security of tenure but security of tenure is no damn good if you cannot afford the rent. The Minister is giving with one hand while he is taking away - with a gut punch - with the other. This is really hard to explain to people. Even the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, struggled to generate any level of understanding while reading his script. It is going to be much harder to understand and virtually impossible to enforce. The Residential Tenancies Board is already struggling with the significant caseload that it has, and the level of complexity and confusion being proposed here is going to make the board's job much more difficult.”
“It also ignores the very difficult decisions that renters are now going to face because of this change. Will they put off having children? Will they put off taking up a job or educational opportunity? Will they have to continue to live in inadequate, overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation for fear of paying those extra rents? That is the real choice the Minister, Deputy Browne, and his Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Independent colleagues in government are forcing on renters. To make matters even worse, the Minister is proposing a level of complexity both in rent setting and tenure rules that is just perplexing. There are going to be five different sets of rent-setting rules. How anybody thinks that is a credible form of rent regulation is beyond me. There will be four different sets of tenure rules.”
“I will say it again: what that means is that within the course of 12 months, up to 60,000 tenancies - many more renters in those tenancies - will be paying thousands upon thousands of extra euro in rent each year. Many of them will be first-time renters in September. The majority of students live in the mainstream private rental sector and not student-specific accommodation. They are going to be hit very hard. If that is not a vicious assault on renters in the private rental sector, I do not know what is. It is the death knell of the most modest and ill-conceived rent pressure zone regulation that I can imagine but one for which renters are going to pay dearly. The Minister will of course say that tenants who remain in their existing tenancies will not be impacted but what that ignores is the level of churn in the private rental sector.”
“If you make a very simple calculation using the data from the Residential Tenancies Board of new and existing rents, the average additional rent to be charged by a renter captured by the market reset in a year would be €3,000. That is €3,000 extra in rent that the Minister is imposing on those renters. In fact, because the RPZs have had a bigger effect outside Dublin, the impact in the first year alone will be an extra €3,500 in rent. In Galway city, where the gap is the largest, the Minister is proposing to allow landlords to charge up to an additional €4,500 in rent a year for a new first-time tenancy commencing in March onwards. I do not understand how the Minister and the Minister of State can describe that as fair or balanced.”
“What is the average length of a tenancy currently in the private rental sector? It is three and a half years according to the Residential Tenancies Board. A quarter of all tenancies registered annually are new first-time tenancies. What that means is that if those two trends continue, within a matter of months up to 60,000 tenancies could be affected each and every single year. Within four to six years the overwhelming majority of private renters in this State will be captured by the market reset rule. That is what the Minister is proposing. He will not explain it properly to people. He will not be straight with renters but that is what he is proposing. The big question this Government wants to hide from is how much extra this is going to cost those renters?”
“At the very heart of this legislation is a profound transformation in how rents are set - the market reset. As the Minister knows, the current rule is when one tenant moves out and another tenant moves in, the new rent is based on inflation or 2%, whichever is the lower. What is being proposed here from the beginning of March is that when one tenant moves out and another tenant moves in, at the start of the tenancy, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a landlord will be able to reset the rent to market rent. While RPZs will continue over the next six years, at the end of that six-year tenancy if the tenant remains, market reset will happen again. What this means is that from 1 March, thousands upon thousands of renters are going to be hit by the market reset.”
“The rip-off rent hike Bill before us today is without doubt the most profound change to the regulation of the private rental sector in over a decade. Much more significant than that, at the core of this Bill, is nothing short of a vicious financial assault on private renters who are already living in the most expensive and insecure form of housing in the State. The consequence of this legislation over a relatively short period of time will be significantly increased financial hardship for renters; more and more people locked out of an overpriced private rental sector, forced to move back in with their parents, or indeed emigrate; and, crucially, significant increases in homelessness, plus family homelessness, including children. That is what is actually being proposed here today.”
“Crucially, we have to stop scapegoating others for the failures of Government to invest in and resource our planning system and courts to ensure good-quality planning decisions are made in a timely manner and that, on the infrequent occasions they are judicially reviewed, those JRs happen in a timely manner. The Government has starved our local authority planning sections of resources and failed to adequately staff the planning and environment court to deal with planning matters. Until those issues are dealt with, decisions will take too long. I will judge the Government by what it delivers, not by what it promises. On the basis of what it has not delivered to date, I will not hold my breath.”
“However, a key piece of public infrastructure, the DART+ South West through Clonburris and Adamstown strategic development zones, has been delayed for five years because the Government is unwilling to fund it in accordance with the original commitment of the Minister in the previous Government. If we do not get those basics right and if we continue to strangle our local authorities and approved housing bodies with too little funding and too much red tape for the delivery of social and affordable homes, then the folks on the other side of the Chamber can talk all they want about tackling the deficits but things will not change.”
“When the Opposition tabled amendments to give effect to those reasonable demands of Uisce Éireann and others, they were voted down by the Government. The electricity grid is the other one. I live in a constituency, Dublin Mid-West, where the Castlebaggot supply substation was recently built, primarily, if not exclusively, to service new housing and industry. It has all been swallowed up by data centres. The Government cannot say it wants to increase grid capacity for housing and employment when, at the same time, it lifts the cap and continues to prioritise data centres over critical infrastructure. Transport is the same. While there are nowhere near enough homes, particularly social and affordable homes, being built in my constituency, it still has significant increased residential development.”
“Water is a case in point. Most people will name it during this debate. For two years, Uisce Éireann was looking for increased capital funding to improve waste and wastewater treatment; for two years, the Government delayed. Even still, despite the big announcements in the last budget, Uisce Éireann does not have clarity on what additional funding it will get from now until 2030 and for what pieces of critical infrastructure. Those are the facts. Worse than that, reasonable demands of the utility for parallel planning and consenting and for prioritisation of critical infrastructure in the planning system were ignored by Government during the passage of the controversial Planning and Development Act 2024.”
“I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on this important issue. There is a certain degree of scepticism in my attitude to the Government's new-found interest in critical infrastructure. I have been a Deputy for a decade. I am one of a number of people on this side of the House who have been talking about lack of investment, lack of reform and lack of ambition regarding critical infrastructure and delivery of key projects involving housing, renewable energy and public transport. Despite the fact we have many times proposed changes that are required, only recently has the Government started to join the conversation. I will name some of those. Unless the Government delivers these, its new-found interest in addressing infrastructure deficits caused by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments over the decades will only be words.”
“What is the consequence? Renters will be screwed again and we will highlight this month after month, year after year, as supply does not increase but rents do. This is on the Minister and we will oppose this legislation tooth and nail.”
“Increase investment in social homes and increase investment in genuinely affordable homes. Increase support for the SME builder-developer sector to build homes for working people to buy. The Minister will not do any of those things. Instead, at the behest of the large corporate institutional investors, he is allowing for a market reset and that will do one thing and one thing only. It will mean a small increase in high-density, high-end, high-price private rental, which is not a solution to the crisis. We have set out the alternatives. We have showed the Minister how it will be costed, but the only people it is listening to is its old pals in Irish institutional property, one of whom is the former general secretary of his party, who asked for what? He asked for a market reset, reduced apartment standards and a VAT cut that nobody needs.”
“The only certainty the Government is going create with this legislation is that hard-pressed renters who are paying rip-off rents are going to have to pay even more. That is the only certainty. There is an alternative. We have set it out over and over again, which is to temporarily ban rent increases, put money back into renters' pockets and deliver the kind of supply that renters need.”
“What that means is that over a period of four years, the overwhelming majority of tenants will move from a situation of having the meagre and modest protections of the rent pressure zones to even higher rip-off rents. Nobody believes that this will result in rents being reduced in the short to medium term. The Minister and his Department have done no analysis so why is he coming into this Chamber and misleading people by saying that this Bill will not result in ever increasing rip-off rents when that is what it is designed to do? Institutional investors asked for it. They are the only people who wanted it. He has given it to them and renters are going to pay the price.”
“The average length of a tenancy in the private rental sector is three and a half years and 25% of all tenancy registrations in a year are first-time tenancies. Students, particularly those in purpose-built student accommodation, typically rent year to year. The direct consequence of the legislation the Minister is going to bring to Cabinet on Tuesday is that from 1 March, ever greater numbers of renters will see already-unaffordable rents rise even higher. That is what he is doing. For some, it will be at the beginning of their tenancy but for all, it will happen within six years and for students, it will happen year on year.”
“We understand that on Tuesday the Minister intends to bring his rip-off rent hike Bill to Cabinet for approval, a Bill that will sound the death knell effectively, over time, of rent pressure zones, RPZs. This is going to result in ever greater numbers of renters having their rent reset to the market rate. Will the Minister confirm to the House that the overwhelming majority of renters, over a period of four years, will effectively lose the meagre rent pressure zone protections as a consequence of his actions?”
“They failed, and so too will he. Who will be the losers? They will be the very people who my colleague spoke about - those in desperate need of social, affordable or private to purchase homes. Those are the people he is letting down. We will not let up on holding the Minister to account so long as he is in office. We will not stop bringing forward sensible, credible proposals to tackle these problems.”
“Here is my prediction: in two, three or four years' time - whatever amount of time this Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Lowry lackey Government limps on for - somebody standing on this side of the House will not just be mentioning the failures of Simon Coveney, Eoghan Murphy or Darragh O'Brien in tackling vacancy and dereliction; the name of James Browne will be added to that sad and sorry list of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Ministers who talk the right talk, but when it comes to action and delivery, fail. Just as the Minister is presiding over record levels of homelessness, record rents, record house prices and the slowest rate of social and affordable housing delivery in recent times, so too is he going to fail on vacancy and dereliction. Why? Because he is offering nothing new, and nothing different from his predecessors.”
“Again, Deputy Gould quoted figures from geodirectories and the census. For me, one of the most shocking figures from the most recent census is that about 40,000 homes were vacant between the two censuses. Not only have we high levels of vacancy and dereliction, but the length of time they are vacant or derelict is unacceptably long. If the Minister was really serious, if this was a war and he wanted to make it a crime, if he really believed it was antisocial behaviour, there would be a level of urgency and a willingness to work with the Opposition to tackle those issues. We have not heard any of that here today.”