Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Government seeks to pick holes in People Before Profit-Solidarity's Rent Reduction Bill, but offers absolutely no alternative on how to control rents that are off the charts and that are directly contributing to the worst homelessness crisis on record. A record number of 11,600 families, including nearly 4,000 children, are languishing in emergency accommodation and thousands more have got notices to quit and are facing the real prospect of eviction and homelessness over the next period because of the Government's callous and cruel decision to lift the moratorium on evictions. The Government offers no solution. The senior Minister should be here, but that is typical of his studied contempt for Opposition Bills or motions that seek actually to address the housing crisis, contrary to the lie the Government repeatedly tells, that the Opposition only critiques the Government but does not offer solutions, when what we have actually seen this morning is that the truth is the exact opposite of that. We offer solutions; the Government picks holes in them and offers no alternatives.

While I was sitting in the housing committee yesterday across from Darragh O'Brien, where he was justifying the ridiculous and disgraceful announcement that he will give hundreds of millions of euro to private developers to incentivise and encourage them to deliver more housing, I got a text from my office about a family where the bailiffs will be coming around on Tuesday. This is a family where both parents are working, they have two children, and they are being evicted from the home in which they have lived for 13 years, even though they always paid the rent and never did anything wrong. To add insult to injury for this family, the mother works for an insurance company but she works from home. If she goes into emergency accommodation, she will lose her job as well. As if it is not bad enough that she, her kids and her family, who have done nothing wrong, are going to be evicted, she will also lose her job. What do you think she has been doing as she has been dragged through the notice-to-quit process, the eviction process, going to court and facing a proceeding where a judge enforces the order because there is no protection for these tenants who have done nothing wrong? They have been looking desperately at myhome.ieanddaft.iefor something they can afford, but they cannot find it. If you go on myhome.ieanddaft.ienow and try to find something a worker on ordinary, average income could actually afford, you would be feeling despair very quickly. They spent a year trying to find places. Now, the bailiffs will be coming on Tuesday because they cannot find anything. If you go on myhome.ieanddaft.ie, what you will find is one-bedroom apartments for €2,200. That is what you will find in my area: one bedroom for €2,200. You will not find anything with two bedrooms for less than €2,500 and you are more likely to be looking at €3,000. When we look at the average that renters are paying as a proportion of their income being around 40%, that masks the much more grim and desperate reality in Dublin, Galway, Cork, etc., where they are more likely, based on average incomes, to be paying 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% and, in my area, 100% of average incomes. This is what you will see when you go ondaft.ieormyhome.ielooking for a two-bedroom or for a three-bedroom property. In other words, there is nothing there for you. Nothing.

I brought up repeatedly the case of another working family who have already been evicted in court, although they got a stay from the judge, in fairness, who gave them a few months, but they have been evicted, they now have no home and they will be out on the street. Jackie estimated that over the two years of the process of them essentially being evicted for doing nothing wrong, she contacted about 700 landlords who had been advertising. Most of them did not even reply and the vast majority of them were completely unaffordable or there was a massive queue. They were wasting their time.

Let me give the Minister of State another example, which I have again brought up repeatedly, of a mother and her child. When she went into emergency accommodation, her child was eight. Her child is now 12. She works and has always worked. She works for Tusla, looking after vulnerable children, ironically. Her own child's mental health is now on the floor because he has been living with her in one-bedroom emergency accommodation for four years. He cannot bring his friends home. He obviously does not want to tell people about his desperate situation. Imagine what that is doing. All these people are looking at myhome.ieand daft.ieand are looking at rents they could not dream of affording. In her case, she has also been knocked off the housing list, having been on it for eight years, because her income went over the limit. She is terrified she will get a pay increase. This is what people are facing. What has the Government offered these people and many more like them? Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nothing.

We are saying to the Government to link rents to people's ability to pay. Is that an unreasonable thing to do? It seems to me to be a very reasonable thing to do, yet, oh my God, it might upset the landlords, who are making extortionate profits. IRES REIT is making about 50% on every tenant. I have heard Deputy Healy-Rae in the House bemoaning the fact that landlords have to pay 50% tax. I think, "Really? Oh my God, how awful for you", a multiple property owner being taxed 50% on income where and he is doing nothing for it. In normal business investments, a 2% or 5% return on investment would be considered to be doing okay, but landlords feel they are entitled to a 50%, 60% or 70% return on their investment. Why? For doing nothing; because they own lots of property. It is absolutely disgusting, but the Government does not want to upset these people who are disproportionately represented in this House and who will be voting on our Bill because they think it is outrageous that anybody should suggest that the amount of money they can make from the human misery we are now facing with the housing crisis and all those desperate families might be interfered with by rent control measures which are commonplace in the rest of Europe.

In the past ten years, there were increases of 87% on average in rents in this country. Across Europe, they were only 18%. Why is that, Minister, do you think? Why do you think that is? It is because in the rest of Europe they have rent controls. That is why. They have various types of rent controls, they can control rents and they do control the rents. However, all the Government does is tell us the developers and the landlords and the investment funds will not like it, they will threaten to pull out of the sector or the market or whatever, and therefore we cannot do anything. That is not acceptable, it is not a solution and it is not an answer. If the Government thinks 25% is too much, why does it not propose 30%, as Deputy Barry said, or even 35%, as the Government is doing with cost rental?

That said, I received a letter this morning from a teacher who points out that the 35% of his income will mean that even though he is not eligible for social housing, he will not be able to afford the cost rental that is coming in Shanganagh because the rents are going to be over the 35% threshold. He earns too much for social housing but not enough for the Government's cost-rental, so-called affordable, solution. At every level, the Government's policies are failing and leading to misery and suffering for ordinary people who have done nothing wrong because it will not challenge the sacred cow of the market. It is a disgrace and members of the Government should be ashamed of themselves, but at least we are putting forward solutions and will, I hope, get rid of the Government in order that we can implement them.

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