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

The approach to the affordability of housing is just not working on the ground. The Minister says supply is increasing. I accept that. Everybody can see the cranes around the place. There are a lot of them in my area. However, everything coming onto the market is being rented at €2,200 a month or more. That is no good to anybody. That supply would be all well and good if it was being delivered at affordable levels but the only people who can buy these homes are investment funds. They rent them out at shocking rents, which the State picks up the bill for with HAP, or even worse, people just cannot afford them and they go homeless. Something is not working. The problem is that there is no control on what these people can charge. The limited 4% cap on rent increases does nothing about the setting of new rents. In any event, we are at a level of rent unaffordability that is so bad and damaging that we have to do something radical about it. I just do not see what we are doing. Is the Minister suggesting that if Housing for All eventually works, those rents are going to come down? I do not in any way want to be insulting here but he is living a fantasy if he thinks those rents will come down voluntarily via the market. They are not going to come down unless the State brings them down or delivers a supply of its own affordable and social housing on a scale that will cover the market failure. At the moment, even with the increase in supply that is beginning to happen, I just do not see how the rents or the cost of these units will get to a level that is affordable to ordinary people. I do not see where the plan will make that happen.

On the energy stuff, I do not mind which way the Government does it. I take the Minister's point about the ESB. In that case, we should just set affordable prices per unit. Given the profits these companies are making, that could be absorbed. They could afford to reduce the unit price of electricity. I do not mind how we go about doing it. I am simply stating that these energy companies, whether private or State-owned, are making a lot of money at the moment so they could afford to make fewer profits. That could in turn deliver lower prices that are actually affordable for people. That requires a degree of State intervention however you go about it, whether it is controlling the-----