Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Last Thursday, the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government urged the Dáil to reject the Social and Affordable Housing Bill 2016, which was proposed by the Labour Party. According to the amendment he proposed, our Bill "pre-empts" the delivery of the commitment in his action plan for housing and homelessness to publish "a strategy for the rental sector". We now find ourselves in a daft position. The Government announced its strategy for the rental sector earlier today. In two days' time, the House will be invited to vote down a housing Bill on the basis that it is premature in advance of the publication of the strategy. I hope all Members of the House remember on Thursday that this was the reason given by the Government for not providing rent certainty. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, promised last week that the rental strategy would, above all else, provide "predictability for landlords and tenants and... improve security of tenure", so we cleared the decks and waited expectantly. To put it bluntly, the Government has failed the test today.

The only way the Government can stand over this excuse for a strategy is by admitting that it has no real grasp of the nature and scale of the problem. Tenants are facing increasing pressures, such as increasingly unaffordable rents, insecurity of tenure and poor standards. Many single people and families now spend 40% of their net incomes on modest private rental accommodation. As we have just heard, rents have increased by an unprecedented 12% in the past year. It is obvious that one solution is to increase supply, but that alone is unlikely to stabilise or reduce house prices or rents. Everyone apart from the Government and the Fianna Fáil Party now agrees that rent control is needed. This view is shared by Threshold, Focus Ireland, the Simon Community, the Peter McVerry Trust and the National Economic and Social Council. The all-party Committee on Housing and Homelessness recommended that rent reviews be linked to the consumer price index or a similar index. There is virtual unanimity on doing this, but for some reason that is not enough to persuade this minority Government and Fianna Fáil.

As the Taoiseach knows, rent regulation is the norm in Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. He is aware that the Labour Party did not become converts to rent regulation in opposition. We did our best to get movement on it when we were sitting on the other side of the House. The Taoiseach knows how ferocious the lobby on these issues was and remains. He will agree that a concerted campaign waged by Irish and international property and mortgage interests against any form of rent regulation has so far held sway. When a representative of the biggest landlord in the country was interviewed in The Irish Timeslast month, he referred to the Irish rental market as "a great market". He said that his company would be content with 3% annual rent increases but, astonishingly, the Government and Fianna Fáil believes that a 4% limit on rent increases is acceptable. I suggest that such a measure is not enough. I ask the Taoiseach, even at this late hour, to accept the consensus that rent controls are required in the crisis market that currently exists and to allow the Labour Party Bill that will be voted on in the Dáil on Thursday to be agreed.

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