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

Some 750,000 people live in the private rented sector. In Dublin one in four households rent. Gone are the days of renting being the preserve of transient students, low income families or those who were saving to buy their first home. Increasingly, the private rented sector is where low and middle income families, and those who are languishing on council waiting lists, spend long periods of time. For three years the rent crisis has spiralled out of control. As the Tánaiste knows, average rents across the State are now €1,000 per month and in Dublin average rents are in excess of €1,500 per month. Rents are now higher than they were at the peak of the boom. In the Tánaiste's own constituency, a family renting a three-bedroom house in Foxborough or in Earlsfort can expect to pay €1,700 per month. That is more than €20,000 per year for an average family home. Low and middle income families who rent are now paying between 40% and 60% of their disposable income on rents. Families relying on rent supplement or housing assistance payment, HAP, are being priced out of the market. A 200% increase in family homelessness in the last two years is directly related to the crisis in the rented sector. Tonight some 2,500 children will spend another night in emergency accommodation, many because of the failures of the Tánaiste and her Government since taking office. The mealy-mouthed measures introduced in 2014 did nothing to stop the spiralling cost of accommodation. When Sinn Féin introduced the Rent Certainty Bill in June, Fine Gael - enthusiastically supported by Fianna Fáil - voted it down. That legislation would have saved hard-pressed families who are renting up to €2,000 per year. The Tánaiste has said that we are pre-empting the Minister, Deputy Coveney's strategy for the private rented sector which is due later this year. Yet, only weeks later the Minister introduced legislation seeking to amend the Residential Tenancies Act. It seems that the Government is happy to pre-empt its own rental strategy so long as it is not helping hard-pressed renters. Struggling families who are renting are crying out for the Tánaiste's help and they have a very simple question. Will her Government introduce emergency rent certainty legislation next week to stop the spiralling costs of rents and ease the burden on these families?

See this speech in context