Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The private rental sector is in its deepest crisis in modern history. Since the Government took office, rents have increased by 23% and are now higher than they have ever been at any other point in history. In fact, they are now so high that not only are many people being forced to remain at home with their families into their 30s but couples in their 30s are having to double up in single-family accommodation and put off significant milestones in life, including having children and getting married. Front-line public and private sector workers with eviction notices tell us they will have to leave their jobs because they cannot find alternative private rental. Moreover, under the Government's watch, like under that of previous Governments, the private rental sector is shrinking. Small, single-property landlords, who often provide accommodation at the middle and the bottom end of the market, are leaving in significant numbers, at between 7,000 and 10,000 annually since 2017, and the low volume of new stock that has been coming into the market, from high-end, non-tax-paying institutional investors, is simply too expensive for even people on high incomes, as other Deputies stated.

That is happening because of bad Government policy. It is not the fault of the Opposition or whoever the future Government may be. It is the Minister of State's responsibility and the responsibility of his Government colleagues. For a number of years, Sinn Féin has been making a clear set of proposals as to how to tackle this, and that proposition centres on three pillars. The first relates to the urgent need for a ban on rent increases, not just for existing tenancies but for new tenancies and new rental stock coming into the market, pegged at standardised average rents, not new asking rents, as recorded by the RTB. We would then like rent reviews in the private rental sector to be index-linked to an index based on wages and the movement of the economy in order that there will be long-term stability and certainty for renters and, indeed, for landlords.

The second measure reflects something Deputy Barry rightly said. A ban on rent increases is not enough; renters need relief, and our preference still is for a refundable tax credit for all private renters to put a full month's rent back into their pocket. It would amount to an 8.8% cut in rents, in real terms.

The most important element of our package, however, is not those emergency measures but a dramatic increase in the delivery of genuinely affordable cost-rental accommodation and increased social. In its three years in office, the Government has delivered fewer than 1,000 cost-rental units and missed its targets, and, as Deputy Boyd Barrett outlined, cost rental is increasingly unaffordable. Prices of €1,450 and €1,550 in the suburbs of Dublin, in north County Wicklow or on the commuter belt of Kildare and Meath are not affordable, and those prices are going to rise. The cost-rental subsidy the Government announced yesterday, whenever it has worked out the details of how it is going to operate, is going to see cost rental in Dublin city at €1,600, €1,700, €1,800 a month or more. For the Green Party, which, alongside us, has campaigned for cost rental for years, the fact it is making such a mess of such an important policy instrument speaks volumes about its inability to influence Government policy.

The real issue is that our private rental sector is too big. It grew dramatically during the Celtic tiger era, by up to 20% of the total rental stock. Half of the people who live in the private rental sector do not want to be there and should not be there. They should be in social homes, affordable rental or affordable purchase. The most important policy objective of any government that is serious about affordability should be to reduce the size of the private rental sector as a proportion of the overall housing stock as we increase public housing. The private rental sector should probably amount to about 10% of our housing system and should not be filled with people on subsidies such as HAP, RAS or the rent supplement or people spending extortionate sums from their wages on rent.

With respect to the Bill, Sinn Féin will be more than happy to allow it to go to Committee Stage, but I might share with its proposers some of our experience of looking at similar proposals. We looked a number of years ago at the issue of unilaterally reducing rents in a number of ways and consulted widely with legal experts in the field. While they advised us it could be constitutional to reduce rents unilaterally, we would have to have an appeal mechanism for every individual landlord who would want to challenge that decision on the basis of it having a detrimental impact on the viability of their business. That would be administratively very costly and burdensome and it would mean many renters would not get the benefit of the reductions if the landlords won their cases. We were also advised that there could be a significant drive in litigation, not on constitutional grounds but for breach of contract, given many of us who are renters have contracts and landlords would be entitled to go to the courts to say their contracts had been breached as a result of Government policy. That does not mean those landlords would win those cases - they would have to be fought - but it could take a year or two both to set up an administrative appeal mechanism and to wait for individual tenants to fight battles in the courts, all while renters would not get the support that is required.

Those are the reasons we did not go down the route the sponsoring Deputies went down. Having said that, I accept their bona fides. They want to do what we want to do, namely, support and protect renters, so we will be happy to allow the Bill to go to committee.

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