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

I put it to the Tánaiste that both her party and Fianna Fáil have been involved in an utterly despicable and dishonest charade around the issue of rents that impacts upon the well-being of tens of thousands of people affected by the rental crisis.

Precisely 10,000 renters in crisis situations contacted Government agencies between June and December this year, due to plans by landlords to increase their rent on the spurious basis of relatives moving in, plans to sell the house or for some other unjustified reason. The roofs over the heads of these tens of thousands of people are in question, yet this Government and Fianna Fáil engage in an elaborate and despicable charade in which they pretend to be representing the interests of tenants when, in fact, they are arguing about how much profit landlords can make from the misery, anxiety and insecurity of tenants. That is what they are arguing about. The Government fought tooth and nail against bus workers who asked for a 4% annual wage increase and workers who want their pay to be brought back to the 2009 level, but somehow it thinks it is acceptable that landlords, who have already achieved rents in excess of 2009 levels, should have a 4% increase every year for the next three years, bringing already unaffordable rent levels up to the outer stratosphere as far as ordinary workers are concerned given the wages they earn.

I can give some examples. According to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the average rent for a three-bedroom house in south Dublin is €2,280 per month. The average wage is approximately €34,000 per year, with net take home pay per month being approximately €2,400. Already, therefore, approximately 90% of an average worker's income is required to pay for a three-bedroom house in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. The Government thinks it is acceptable to increase that rent by 4% next year, 8% the following year and then up to 12%. How are people supposed to pay that when, at the same time, the Government resists their demands for pay increases, saying they are unaffordable? The Government and Fianna Fáil, which agrees with the Government that this is acceptable, are doing nothing other than catering for and pandering to the insatiable greed of landlords, vulture funds and financial and property speculators, and care nothing for the tens of thousands of people who fear for the roofs over the heads of their children and families. It is utterly shameful.

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