Rory Hearne
Dublin North-West · Social Democrats · Ireland
“I thank you, a Leas Cheann-Comhairle, for your work and support during the year and thank all the staff here. I wish my colleagues in government the best of luck over the summer and respite from our robust engagement. We look forward to going at it again in the autumn.”
“The Dublin public will be very upset when they realise their fire fighters and emergency response service are at risk of being split and downgraded.”
“I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. It is important to have a discussion about the context of education costs and back-to-school costs. Of course, the context is massive inequality in this country.”
“However, what it is actually doing is throwing families into even more stress on top of not being able to pay the basic bills. In my constituency to respond and support families struggling with back-to-school costs, the Finglas voluntary food and family support service, Feed Our Homeless, last year organised help for families with a pop-u…”
“A second tier of child benefit would lift 55,000 children out of poverty but the Government will not do it. It costs the same as what it has given in tax breaks to developers, investor funds and large fast-food giants. Childhoods pass quickly. No child should have their future limited by poverty.”
“The Government is ramming through planning legislation this week that will exempt sheds out the back without proper scrutiny. It is satisfied with handing our young people to vulture landlords. The Government is now offering a future of renting a shed out the back with no rights whatsoever.”
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“What is the Government doing? I do not see anything in the Government's measures that addresses the fundamental problem that we still have a rental system where the rules and laws are not obeyed by landlords and are not enforced sufficiently by the Residential Tenancies Board. Dr. Byrne goes on to make the point that we will have a situation where "the economic incentives of landlords are not aligned with the Government’s stated policy of creating long-term, secure rental homes. Dr. Byrne also wrote: ... a landlord who has tenants in and out every six months will be laughing all the way to the bank. Similarly, when letting properties, landlords are now incentivised to rent to likely short-term tenants ... rather than likely long-term ones ...”
“it appears that landlords will still be able to evict within the six-year period if the property is required for ‘family use’. This is a regrettable inclusion, as it undermines the objective of the policy by allowing for a form of eviction that the tenant can do nothing about and has no responsibility for. Similarly, the hardship clauses for landlords could be wide open to exploitation by landlords. We know this because thousands of landlords already ignore the law. The Government is assuming that we have this rental system where landlords follow the law and the rules. They do not, and the Government knows this. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of landlords are currently not even registered with the Residential Tenancies Board. They evict renters in an illegal manner. They charge rents higher than allowed in rent pressure zones.”
“If the Government does not increase the HAP payments, how will renters in receipt of HAP keep pace with higher rents? As Mr. Allen said very accurately, "a solution which says 'we can deliver more housing, but the cost is that you won't be able to afford to live in it,' isn't a solution". Dr. Michael Byrne, writing in today's Irish Examiner , which I am sure the Minister of State has read, raised a number of issues regarding the protections from eviction, including no-fault evictions, the Government is introducing. The Social Democrats have been calling for a ban on no-fault evictions for many years. It is deeply frustrating that so many people could have been prevented from being made homeless if the Government had implemented the no-fault eviction ban when we actually asked for it. Dr. Byrne wrote: ...”
“The Government might not take it from me and might disagree with what I am saying, but I am sure it will listen to and have spoken to Mr. Mike Allen, head of advocacy for Focus Ireland. Speaking on RTÉ's "Six One" news, he said the steps being taken by the Government regarding rent were "incredibly complicated". He said "the increase in rent that's going to take place when landlords are allowed to reset to the market rent, that [rent] is going to be very substantial". Even with the protections from eviction, if the rent cannot be paid, the tenant will not be able to stay. The tenant will be evicted because the landlord will be able to do so. The bigger question is how the State will keep up with the HAP payments to cover the higher rents.”
“Is it that renters suck up the poverty and homelessness and choose between rent and groceries for an undetermined number of years in the abstract hope that their rents will, at some point, get lower? The Government is taking a gamble, but it is gambling with renters' lives, betting on the likelihood that the free market and the investor funds will come through for renters. I do not like the odds and it is not a bet the Government should be making. Let us not call this "market rent" and keep legitimising it. Let us call it what the Government is actually proposing, namely, exploitation rents. It is back to the rack-rents of landlords that existed in this country many years ago. The Government is bowing to investors, lobbyists and landlords and giving them the green light to take whatever they can from renters.”
“The Government is justifying the increase in the rents as incentivising investor funds to build a supply of more expensive and unaffordable rental housing while rents will be allowed to rise in line with inflation. There will be no 2% cap. If inflation starts to rise to 3%, 4%, 5%, 10% or 20%, the rents will increase. This is not a recipe for solving the housing emergency; it is a one-way ticket to a permanent housing disaster, with our younger generation forced to be lifetime renters from institutional funds that have no cap on their rents and will be able to continuously increase rent and screw those young people of their lives, of their dreams and of their hopes of being able to buy homes of their own. What kind of rental sector does the Government think it is creating? What is the best case scenario?”
“The reality for renters, who are terrified and just want to stay in their homes, is that this legislation that is coming down the tracks will mean they will be more disempowered because what they are facing is a rental market where rents will be brought up to the market rate across the board in the coming years. They will live and are being forced to live in more stress and anxiety. The Government claims its policy will protect renters. The real protection that renters need is from the policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which view renters only as an income stream for investors. If we look at the coming six years, the current 2% cap would mean that the rent would rise by 12%. What we will now see is the rent potentially rising by 40% to 50% over six years.”
“What the Government has done and is about to do is giving a very clear signal to landlords to up the rent. The Government has no understanding of the reality of the private rental sector. If it actually understood what it is to be a renter in this country today, there is no way it would have provided measures that allowed landlords multiple loopholes and ways in which they could evict tenants and raise the rents to market rates between tenancies, be that in six years' time or when the tenancies ended. What will happen from 1 March is that landlords will start putting pressure on renters about needing to increase their rents. What powers do the renters have to challenge that? They can go to the RTB, which then starts a process that might, at some point, impose fine on the landlords.”
“This legislation, extending rent pressure zones to the rest of the country, is something the Social Democrats have called for before. We will not be opposing it. As part of the wider legislative changes the Government is proposing, however, we are deeply concerned about significant aspects of it. It is quite a cruel move to give renters around the country who will have an RPZ for six or seven months and then rip it away from them. The Government needs to be challenged again. It is not being honest when it says that renters in existing tenancies are protected. What happens when their tenancies come to an end? What happens when their landlords decide to sell the properties in six years' time? They will face market rents and a rental system and housing market that will be even more unaffordable.”
“We need proper investment in our public transport system, which is also a key component in expanding areas in terms of housing, including housing developments outside of our city cores.”
“Some of the changes we have seen have been beneficial, but others, as previous speakers mentioned, have disconnected some communities. People feel that public transport is not actually serving the public. Another issue that needs to be addressed is the privatisation of public transport. We see the ongoing expansion of private bus services when we know from the experience in other countries and our own experience that privatisation does not work. We need a properly funded public transport system, with decent conditions for those who work in it. The trade unions that support those workers have made the point that privatisation is bad for both the workers and the public.”
“How much longer will it go on? How many more delays will add more costs? We need to get the metro delivered. It needs to be a priority, and we need to see guarantees in respect of it. Another area where we see development is the Luas to Finglas, which is very welcome, but I and Róisín Shortall before me put forward a proposal that there would be an extension in that Luas project to Ballymun which would link Finglas, Ballymun and across the city with the airport when the metro is delivered. I ask the Minister again to look at this as a possibility for developing transport in the city to connect our areas properly. As my colleagues have mentioned, the issue of capacity within public transport in Dublin city is reaching absolute crisis point. The transport system, in terms of buses, trains, the DART and the Luas, is at absolute capacity.”
“An issue that is particularly important for my constituency of Dublin North West but affects the entire city is the MetroLink. Ireland is one of the richest countries in the EU, but Dublin is the only large western capital city that does not have a metro. The metro was first promised in 2005, some 20 years ago. It was ditched in 2010 by Fine Gael, so we are still waiting for the metro. The expected deadline for delivery is 2035. Dr. Sean Sweeney, who is the project director, says it might not even be delivered by then. This is one of the core public transport projects that the State and this city need, yet we are not sure if it will even be delivered by 2035. We have to see guaranteed timelines for delivery of the metro. We are now looking at the rail system potentially costing 20% more than its projected budget of €9.5 billion.”
“The State, which is the landlord, should be leading on responses and treating tenants of social housing with dignity and respect. That has to change from the top down and local authorities have to change as well.”
“We have to look at what the structural problem is here. Why are local authorities unable to respond in the way they should be able to? We need to go back to in-house maintenance. Local authorities need the funding and resources to systematically and quickly respond to these issues. Children are growing up in social housing in this country whose lives are being damaged by mould and damp. It impacts their education, mental health and life chances. It is a breach of their human rights. We are breaching the rights of children who are growing up in social housing because of the State's failure to act. This is the State's responsibility; that is one of the most frustrating aspects of this issue. These people are tenants of this State.”
“I thank the Minister of State for his response and engagement on this matter. To iterate the scale of this crisis of mould, damp and poor conditions, it was seven years ago that the European Committee of Social Rights found the Irish State to be in violation of human rights and failing to take sufficient and timely measures to ensure the right to housing of an adequate standard for families living in local authorities housing. Seven years ago, the committee found against Ireland on the basis of the presence of sewage, contaminated water, dampness and persistent mould and it raised serious concerns about habitability. It noted in particular the high number of residents in certain estates in Dublin complaining of sewage invasions and issues of dampness and mould. This is not acceptable.”
“She is 71 and has her own health issues. This impacts her physical and mental health. She contacted the council and was told it would be eight or nine weeks before someone would be able to come out and even look at the property. How can older residents be subjected to this unacceptable wait time? I also raise the issue of Cromcastle Court. It is now so dilapidated that residents wonder if it is already vacant and why has it taken ten years for regeneration. Similar estates across the city include Dolphin House, Pearse House and others. In my constituency in Finglas there are major issues with mould and damp. How long will tenants be left living in substandard accommodation that impacts their physical and mental health? We need more action and support for local authorities.”
“That home has become a nightmare for Craig and his mother. Mould is destroying his clothes, bed linen and belongings. It covers the walls and ceilings. He is only 23 but now he cannot work because of the health impacts of living in these conditions, which include congestion, facial pain, headaches and disrupted sleep. His doctor had to write to Dublin City Council, pleading for action. Is this what social housing looks like in a wealthy republic? If Craig gives up and leaves that home, how long will it sit empty before it is restored and made habitable? Will it be weeks, months, a year? This is just one of many cases. Another case that came to the attention of my office is that of an older resident of Ballymun in her seventies who is experiencing a distressing housing situation. Her home is also filled with mould and destroyed with damp.”
“The World Health Organization outlines clearly that mould and damp have major impacts on health, through asthma for example, and on other areas, even mental health. There appears to be no urgency, transparency or accountability. Worst of all, no empathy is shown in how tenants are responded to as regards voids and housing maintenance. We need to go back to what worked, namely, in-house maintenance teams in local authorities. They were the backbone of housing upkeep. They could turn homes around quickly but they were decimated during the Celtic tiger period and again during austerity. I spoke to a man called Craig who contacted my office. He has lived in Ballymun all his life. He started working when he was 15. After experiencing homelessness, he finally secured a local authority home, which was a chance to rebuild and recover.”
“I wish to discuss housing maintenance, in particular the impact of mould and damp on tenants of social housing in my constituency and throughout the country. It is an area I have worked in for almost two decades in an academic capacity doing research on the impact of mould and damp on residents and tenants and working with communities. Mould and damp are endemic across social housing in this city and the country. There is a systemic failure to provide people, particularly families, children and vulnerable people, with housing of a decent standard. A basic human right to housing includes at its core the right to adequate housing, which means housing does not have defects that impact health.”
“I have made the point publicly, and I will say it again: right now, the Minister for housing and this Government are one of the blockages, if not the major blockage and barrier to housing.”
“That is why the Minister is removing the rent cap between new tenancies. His policy makes it very clear: he is allowing rents to rise in order to incentivise a supply of new housing. He is going to remove the inter-tenancy cap and rents will be brought up to market rents. He is going to introduce a policy whereby new-build units will be tied to inflation. What that means is that if inflation rises to 4%, 5% or 20%, rents will rise on that basis. What we are going to see is incredible. The Minister admitted to it today: he cannot protect nurses, doctors, students, guards - anyone needing short-term leases - from rent increases. Is this not absolutely unacceptable? How is he justifying allowing rents to rise to market rents when we are in the middle of a housing emergency? The Minister talks about barriers and blockages to housing.”
“They decommissioned local authorities and then Fine Gael, during the years from 2011 onwards, effectively gutted local authorities of their ability and capacity to deliver housing. We talk about an emergency and the Government talks about the housing crisis, but it created it. There is no acknowledgment of the fact that this crisis was created by decades of policy failures and bad policy decisions that effectively decommissioned the role of local authorities in delivering housing. We must recover that and get back to the point at which local authorities can deliver thousands of homes each year. The other key policy that has brought us here is the treatment of housing as a financial asset, as a real estate asset class that is about investor funds and corporate landlords profiting from housing.”
“The housing catastrophe is no accident of policy, it results from decades of policies. We could go back 40 years to see the roots of the housing crisis. It goes back to the years of the Celtic tiger when local authorities were effectively decommissioned from delivering social housing. We heard from a former county manager at the housing committee last week who spoke about this. He was the manager of Fingal County Council and he talked about when councils had the capacity, when they were delivering thousands of homes directly every year. What happened was Fianna Fáil-led governments said local authorities were no longer needed and they turned to Part V and the developers to deliver social housing.”
“Then we can look at those who are in homelessness or in hidden homelessness - the people who are not counted - the couch surfers, those sleeping in cars and those in domestic violence refuges who are not counted in our homeless figures. All of them are experiencing some level of anxiety and ongoing stress. That is why this housing crisis should not be called just a crisis: as I said, it is a social catastrophe. We need to be clear that having a home of your own that is safe, secure and affordable is the most basic of human needs. It is, in fact, a human right. Although this Government does not view it that way and has yet to legislate in policy or in law to make housing a human right, housing is a human right, one of the most basic rights that people have. Everyone in this country has a right to a safe, secure and affordable home.”
“We look at the despair and anxiety among half a million adults stuck in their childhood bedrooms, who are unable to start an independent life, get a home of their own, start a family or see a point at which they can actually begin their lives. I have spoken to many of them and they talk about how difficult it is to see hope. Many of them have emigrated or are emigrating. They are the nurses, doctors and tradespeople that we need in this country. If we go to renters, a million renters in this country are now facing even higher rents in the coming years, rents that will be increased across the board to market rents that are absolutely unaffordable.”
“The motion is a very important one. It is putting forward solutions. We have heard criticism directly from the Taoiseach regarding the lack of solutions, but they are there, we have put them forward and we are putting them forward again tonight. The Opposition parties are bringing this motion to highlight that this housing crisis is no longer just a crisis. In fact, it has not been a crisis for many years, it is and has been an emergency. It is, in fact, beyond an emergency, it is a social catastrophe. When we look at what has happened in terms of the housing crisis and this record - we can talk about a new Government, but this is a continuation of the previous Government, which has within it Members who have been in power since 2011 - we see that it is now causing a social catastrophe in particular in the area of mental health.”
“We still do not ensure that the delivery of care for the most vulnerable people in our society is done through a human rights approach, one that puts their dignity, and the State's responsibility to guarantee their safety and protection, central to service provision, whether it is children in State care, children in homelessness or adults who are resident in nursing homes. This is just not good enough.”
“The key issue Paul asked me to raise was that he wants to see immediate action from the Government, as set out by Safeguarding Ireland, to implement the framework for adult safeguarding, as published by the Law Reform Commission in April 2024, and to get the interagency working group up and running, with an appropriately skilled senior civil servant seconded to it, to implement and put in place a national safeguarding authority. Will the Minister of State commit to Paul and to the families affected to moving immediately to implement this? Implementing this framework is the first step towards ensuring residents in care homes are protected. Ultimately, they are not being treated with the care or dignity they deserve and the Government has a responsibility to ensure this does not happen again.”
“Shockingly, Paul told me today that no one from HIQA had been in touch directly with him to give him an apology for how his father was treated. He and his family have not been given the decency of an apology from HIQA and the State regarding their failures to protect his father and ensure he received adequate care and was protected from harm in a nursing home. Will the Minister of State and HIQA give him and his family the decency of an apology for the State's failure to safeguard his father? Why does it take the airing of vulnerable adults being treated terribly on national television before we see action on this? The question is whether we will see action on this.”
“Paul and his family described the shock and distress at seeing footage of their 80-year-old father being roughly handled at Beneavin Manor in Glasnevin. Paul said that no one should be handled like their father was, that these were human people who lost their dignity, and no one should have to go through that. The family had relied upon HIQA reports on Beneavin Manor for guidance in selecting a nursing home. The most recent publicly available HIQA inspection for Beneavin Manor dates from November 2024. It references residents being happy, inspectors finding the centre well managed and the quality and safety of the services provided being of a good standard. Clearly, as the "RTÉ Investigates" programme showed, this was not the reality for elderly people resident there such as Paul's father.”
“It is another scandal. It is another failure of our State to protect our most vulnerable. The failings of care that have been revealed in the "RTÉ Investigates" programme are horrifying. Vulnerable residents were left unsupervised, there was a lack of basic supplies and there was the rough handling of older people. One of the nursing homes featured is Beneavin Manor in my constituency of Dublin North-West. Members of the public throughout the constituency, and the country, who have family in nursing homes are distressed and worried. How can they trust that their loved ones are being cared for properly after seeing these failures? Paul Guy, whose father was one of the residents highlighted in the "RTÉ Investigates" programme, reached out to me and I spoke to him today.”
“Yes, it will upset some European partners and yes, it requires taking action that goes beyond the normal course of business, but this is genocide. It is being committed by the State and Government of Israel. They are acting unilaterally to wipe out the Palestinian people, and our Central Bank is facilitating that. Condemning the crimes means nothing if we are funding them. This Government needs to act. It should support this motion as it is the right thing to do.”
“Day after day, thousands of Irish people stand in solidarity and plead with the Government to do more. Opinion polls show that, overwhelmingly, the Irish people want the Irish Government to lead internationally in sanctioning Israel. Therefore, the Government should take the mandate it has been given from the Irish people. It should be courageous and do everything, and I mean everything, it can do to sanction Israel. It should stop the Central Bank facilitating the sale of Israeli war bonds. The Government must do it immediately. As I said, there is a moral, ethical, legal and democratic obligation on the Government to intervene and stop the Irish State facilitating these war bonds. It should step up and take the consequences from the EU. I will repeat it again: take the consequences. It can take a lead.”
“Gaza has become the graveyard of our collective humanity, but what is being done in terms of the mass murder of children, their families, their communities and the entire Palestinian people? The Government is claiming that Ireland is a leader internationally on Palestine and, indeed, it is true that in calling out Israel for its war crimes and genocide, it has done more than other countries. However, it is very clear there is more it could be doing, and, in fact, it is in one of the most powerful places in the world to do more because the Irish people have shown they want the Government to do more. The Irish people themselves are leaders on a global scale. They organise protests every other day in towns, villages and cities. We see them on bridges and we join them.”
“This motion gives the Irish Government the opportunity to fulfil its moral, ethical, legal and democratic obligations to act to prevent the genocide that is being committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel is pursuing a campaign of collective punishment against the Palestinian people, destroying entire cities and forced displacement camps where people have nowhere else to go. It is a war crime, and that war crime is being committed and undertaken, funded through the Irish Central Bank. The most upsetting, abhorrent war crime that is being committed is the collective punishment of children. According to UNICEF, more than 15,000 children in Gaza have been killed, more than 34,000 have been injured and nearly 1 million have been displaced.”
“This means having the capacity to maintain it properly, invest in it and be able to build it in the first instance. Professor Norris made an interesting suggestion - it is in the Housing Commission report - involving the creation of local authority housing delivery organisations that would have the responsibility to deliver housing and manage it. That needs to be looked at.”
“Currently, we would need to double the number of social housing units in this country. If we were to do that within ten years, as Professor Michelle Norris said today at the housing committee, it would mean delivering 18,000 social housing units every year for a decade to reach that 20% target. We are nowhere near delivering that number. They make the case in this report that fundamental to solving the housing crisis is getting back to building social housing, and central to that is local authorities. The councils need the capacity. Policy needs to be shifted to allocate in a way that says clearly that local authorities are public housing providers. Just as our health system and our hospitals deliver public health, our local authorities need to deliver public housing.”
“I was at the housing committee today and listened to the Housing Commission talk about its report and the huge work that went into it. It was shocking to hear members of the Housing Commission talk about the way they have been treated by the Department and the Minister for housing. Some said they have done a great deal of work for different public bodies and Departments down through the years and had never been treated so badly. They asked why the Housing Commission report was ignored by the previous Government and the current Government when the report specifically talks about local authorities, with a number of proposals. The report says we need to achieve the target of 20% of our housing stock being social or public housing. What does this mean in terms of numbers?”
“An emergency motion that was passed at Dublin City Council last night called on the Minister to reverse his decision to cut funding to these social housing programmes. It beggars belief that in the middle of a housing emergency, the Government would pull funding from projects about to deliver and build social and public housing. Some of the councillors at the meeting last night asked whether there is an anti-public housing agenda within this Government. They asked why the Government was cutting funding from a scheme that had been all set up. Mary Callaghan, a local councillor of ours in Ballymun-Finglas, has done huge work in trying to progress social housing projects. She and other councillors described the full withdrawal of funding for these projects as a gut punch. I ask the Minister of State to raise this project with the Minister.”
“Another issue I want to raise relates to the Minister for housing pulling funding for social schemes that were due to go ahead in Dublin, including some in my constituency, in Ballymun. These public-private partnership projects, which I have huge problems with as a way of delivering housing, were due to deliver social housing in several areas but the Minister has now informed Dublin City Council that he is pulling the funding for them. It is absolutely shocking that the Minister is pulling funding from social housing projects that were ready to be delivered in some of the areas most in need of social housing in this country and in parts of Dublin, as I said, from Ballymun and other parts of the city.”
“This is directly leading to homelessness, because local authorities are being told their acquisition budget is to go towards tenant in situ schemes and that they will not be able to invest in the same way with regard to remediating properties they are buying through tenant in situ. Where a local authority wants to prevent a person or family becoming homeless, it must decide whether it is taking it out of the maintenance budget, which again results in the issue of not addressing problems like voids, and it is forced to make decisions between taking people out of homelessness or trying to address voids and other issues. Local authorities should not be forced to make that decision. They should be able to retain the tenants in place in homes, to buy those homes and to renovate voids.”
“Indeed, it is more than frustrating. It is deeply upsetting to people whose families are in homeless accommodation and who look at these boarded-up council flats while they are in homelessness, are unable to access social housing or have huge issues in overcrowded rental properties. It is not acceptable that voids are left for months and in some cases years. There is no excuse for these properties to be left like that for so long. The issue of tenant in situ is linked to this. I spoke to Dublin City Council and have raised this in the Dáil before. The changes the Government has made to the tenant in situ scheme are resulting in local authorities having less funding to purchase tenant properties where tenants are at risk of homelessness.”
“It is a council's role to ensure housing stock is up to the highest standard and is delivered as a public good and a human right in the same way we see that education and health must be held to certain standards. Of course, this is part of the problem. We do not have a system whereby local authorities are held to account. While I have been and am critical of local authorities regarding attitudes to tenants and the failure to deal with issues, there is no getting away from the fundamental cause of the problem, which is that local authorities have not been given the resources or responsibility to treat and deliver public housing as a public good and human right. That is a fundamental missing aspect of our housing policies. In my own areas of Ballymun and Finglas, there is boarded-up social and council housing, which is so frustrating.”
“During the Celtic tiger period, Government policy had decommissioned local authorities from their role in housing and the private market was seen as the way forward in delivering housing. We had the introduction and main focus of policy on Part V, the delivery of housing through private developers. Of course, within all this, local authorities staff left and were not replaced. Unfortunately, within councils, we never saw a focus on, and delivery of, public housing as a public good. I contrast how councils view housing and their housing stock with, for example, our teachers and our education system or our nurses and doctors and our health system. We do not deliver public housing as a public good whereby we see this as our role.”
“I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward the motion today on voids in council housing. I have worked for many years in the area of public and council housing. One of the key issues is that local authorities, historically, for the past 30 or 40 years, have been not just undermined but effectively decommissioned in their role in housing. I remember this clearly from when I worked in council housing in Dublin for many years. I worked as a regeneration worker in social housing flats on issues of voids and tried to work with the council and communities to get social housing delivered properly. I remember speaking to many of the council officials during the latter years of the Celtic tiger and into the crash.”
“The Government has been lobbied very heavily by institutional investors and landlords; that is so clear. The records are there. The lobbying register shows it. The Government has bent to those lobbyists instead of protecting renters. Renters are already struggling - they are in poverty and they cannot afford food, basics and healthcare. Families are going into homelessness as a result of this and what the Government has done today has made matters worse. It will lead to rising rents. When will rents be high enough? Is it when they are €4,000 or €5,000 per month? At what point will the Government say we need to freeze rents? When will rents fall? These policies will not lead to rents falling. We are disgusted with this policy and will fight it as much as we can.”
“Make no mistake about it - anyone who has lived in the private rental sector in this country knows this means that landlords will be able to turn to tenants and say "the rent is increasing and if you don't accept it, we will evict you or if we can't evict you directly, we won't do the maintenance". It will force renters out so they can charge the market rents. These measures will reduce the one protection renters had. This is a policy shift back to institutional investor funds. It is about making build-to-rent corporate landlords central to housing policy and renters will face evictions. We will see more homelessness as a result of these policies. The no-fault eviction ban should be for every renter and it should be implemented immediately. We need a register for rents and a freeze on rents for three years.”
“Of course they can; they are doing it every day. How many evictions took place last year? There were thousands and thousands of evictions. They can evict a tenant through the sale of the property to a family member. Landlords are already on the radio saying that they are leaving properties vacant for two years so they can charge the market rent. They now know that next March, they will be able to charge the market rent full stop. That is what the Government is allowing them to do. Regarding the idea that the Government is introducing protections for renters, half of all renters will not get these protections because they are in properties owned by landlords who own fewer than three properties.”
“The Minister of State is shaking his head, but it is the case that in introducing these measures, he said it is about activating the supply of institutional investors delivering housing. If it is about activating supply, it clearly does that through allowing higher rents because that is what the Minister of State said is needed, that is what lobbyists have been saying and that is what institutional funds have been looking for and now the Government has given it to them. Every tenant will face increased rents within the next six years. We will see rents rise even further but between now and March when the changes come in, we will also see landlords evict tenants so that they can then have the market rent charged.”