Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to the Bill and thank People Before Profit-Solidarity for bringing it forward. Rents have shot up again in my constituency, Dublin Bay North. The latest Daft rental report shows people are being charged on average €2,200 a month in an area where rents were already crazy. That is an 11.5% increase on rents compared with the same period in the previous year. We continue to see record increase after record increase in the rental sector, and this is down to the failure of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Government to introduce effective measures that protect renters. It has never been a more difficult time to be a renter in this State, yet the Government seems to be doing nothing to support renters.

We in Sinn Féin have come up with many costed proposals that would go some way towards protecting renters. We proposed a three-year rent freeze and putting a month's rent back into renters' pockets. However, every time Sinn Féin comes into this House and puts proposals to the Minister, he dismisses them as if his own proposals are working and as if record rents, record homelessness and record house prices are all a figment of the imagination of everyone on this side of the House. This cannot continue. The Government needs to get its finger out. We need 20,000 public homes, including 4,000 affordable and cost-rental dwellings, to be built each year.

I again say to the Minister of State that the lifting of the eviction ban will come back to haunt the Government, during the remainder of its time in office and afterwards. Many vulnerable and working families have been thrown to the wolves by the Government. I plead with the Minister of State to take the opportunity to reinstate the ban, because it is the only support people have.

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