David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I hope that is genuinely the position of the Government and not just the Minister's position, because he is seen by many people outside the Chamber as the friendly face of the Fine Gael Party. Unfortunately, the Fine Gael Party does not always sing from the same hymn sheet as the Minister did this evening.

To get to the heart of this issue, we are dealing with people who are in dire straits. One would think listening to some of the speeches that none of what happened is the fault of policy-makers and that rising rents are somehow an accident of the market. The reality is the State chose to stop building social housing and not to build local authority housing. This did not just happen in the course of the recession. The State stopped building local authority housing even during the boom. Even at the height of the Celtic tiger we started to slow down and we did not build social housing because we were far too reliant on the private sector. If I can have the Minister's attention, we were far too reliant on the private sector and it was all Part V social and affordable housing. What happened, of course, when the crash came was that we stopped building social housing and no local authority housing units were built. The private sector also stopped building, so Part V social and affordable houses dried up and we had no new builds. Everybody in the private rental sector was competing with social housing applicants, and now 95% of social housing applicants are being told by the State the only way it will meet their needs is through the private rental sector. This did not happen because it was inconsistent or incidental to Government policy. All this happened because of policy. The reason rents have increased is social housing tenants and those in need of social housing are competing with those who want private rental accommodation. This is what happened.

We want sustainable and fair rents. Nobody is saying this, in and of itself, is a panacea or the only solution, but it is one way in which we can bring about greater certainty for those families who need it and for those families in need of support. The rising rents we have at present are not sustainable.

Moving away from rent prices being set by the market would also be good for landlords, because it does not suit them to see a spike or rise in rents or, as they have seen in the past, rents drop to unsustainable levels. It suits everybody to have much fairer and sustainable rent prices in the State. Our Bill is an honest attempt to do this. Whatever the committee we proposed will recommend over the coming weeks, it will not prevent the Minister from accepting the Bill. If he really believes this is the right thing to do and it is not just about opposing it for ideological reasons, he should let it go through. I appeal to the Minister to do this, to be constructive and positive and to practise what he preaches. He should let the Bill go through, and whatever differences we have let us work them out in a constructive way on Committee Stage.

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