Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Private Residential Tenancies Board has confirmed that the cost of renting continues to spiral out of control. At the end of May, the average cost of renting a home in Dublin was €1,454 per month, which is a staggering €17,500 per year. That is higher than the highest point reached in 2007. Outside Dublin, while rents are below the 2007 peak, they are still rising. I believe we can agree that these rents are scandalous. Due to the failure of previous Governments to ensure an adequate supply of social and affordable housing, more people are finding themselves reliant on - indeed, trapped in - the private rental sector. How is a low-income family expected to keep pace with such rents? How are working families expected to pay these rents and save for a deposit on their own homes at the same time?

A report from the Homeless Agency shows that spiralling rents is one of the principal causes of family homelessness. Scores of families will sleep in emergency accommodation tonight because they cannot afford their rent. Across the State, rent supplement and housing assistance payments lag considerably behind market rents. Last year, the former Minister with responsibility for housing, Deputy Alan Kelly, and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, were locked in a bitter row over how to deal with rising rents. The Government set its face against rent certainty. It refused to link rents to the consumer price index. Instead, it introduced measures which not only have not worked, but have made matters worse.

The Committee on Housing and Homelessness has received repeated and strong calls in its hearings and submissions for the introduction of rent certainty and for increases in rent supplement and housing assistance payment levels. Will the Government include rent certainty in its action plan on housing which is to be published in August? Second, will the Government ensure there are increases in rent supplement and housing assistance payments to ensure that no family is made homeless due to an inability to pay its rent?

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