David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----and Dublin. The Minister spoke about rent pressure zones, but the entire State is a rent pressure zone. Just because certain areas do not meet the Minister's benchmark and the criteria he puts in place does not mean there is not rent pressure in all parts of our country. There certainly are rent pressures in Waterford.

To return to the Waterford phrase of calling a spade a spade, the reason the Minister has only designated a small number of areas as rent pressure zones is that he is ideologically opposed to market intervention in the interests of ordinary working people. That is really what this is about. He has been forced into proposing this measure kicking and screaming. There have been statements by the Taoiseach and others in Government, before the previous election and since, in which they argued robustly against any market intervention. The Minister is on the record as being opposed to market intervention. At least he has made a U-turn on the principle of it, which I welcome, but all he is doing is dipping his toes into it because he is ideologically afraid of and opposed to such intervention. This is why he has constructed the model he has constructed.

In these rent pressure zones, the pressure is on the people and on families. It has been said by others that families have a real problem with the cost of living. They are forced to take out private health insurance, they have taken huge cuts in pay over recent years and they have been subject to many other cuts and stealth taxes. Any reasonable demands for pay restoration in the public sector or pay increases in the private sector are met with resistance from Ministers who talk about wage restraint and so on. The Government preaches this to these families. This has been the Government's mantra. However, rent increases for landlords can be facilitated without a problem. An Teachta Ó Broin made this point already.

It is not that the Minister is afraid of market intervention. His Government and Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have always intervened in the market but they have done so in the interests of developers, builders and sometimes landlords, mainly in the interests of elites and bankers and so on. We know this and the Minister knows it. Even before this Government assumed office, before the Celtic tiger, Fianna Fáil put in place all kinds of tax incentives for builders to build as much as they wanted, particularly apartments. This was market intervention but it was market intervention for the wrong reasons and is part of the reason for the current crisis.

I will deal specifically with Waterford city and county because the Minister is now considering speeding up the process that may or may not allow Waterford city to become one of these rent pressure zones. This will be a real Hobson's choice for renters in Waterford. I imagine they are trying to figure out what will be best for them. They have been faced with 12% rent increases. They will now face the prospect of being included in a Government scheme which will guarantee rent increases of 4%. What they will not get is affordability or the certainty they want. They will be forced between what will happen in the market and potential increases, which have been high, on the one hand and, on the other, the Government's guaranteed increases of 12%. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place. They will struggle to understand whether this will be good or bad for them. I do not know how to advise them in this regard, but one thing is certain. They will not be better off, they will not be protected and they will not get the benefits they need because the Minister's policy is fundamentally flawed.

This is a landlord's charter. It will not be in the interests of ordinary families. I concur completely with my colleague's comments about the absolute farce we have witnessed over the past 48 hours. I genuinely believe that the Minister is a decent person, but I am sure he understands that the past 48 hours and the way in which Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have handled this issue has been an absolute farce and a joke, has really damaged politics and has laid bare for people the farce that is this so-called new politics. It was a game of one-upmanship between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The victims in this were people struggling with rents. It was they who had to sit back and watch this game unfold over the past 48 hours.

I join my colleague in asking where Deputy Cowen is. He has made himself available to every media outlet over recent days to give Fianna Fáil's position on this issue. He was forced into a humiliating climbdown on the issue, as was the Fianna Fáil Party, and they have put themselves in this position. Very few Fianna Fáil Deputies are here. None of them has spoken. I do not know if any of them even intend to speak on Report Stage. They have gone mute all of a sudden on the issue of rents, yet they have been jumping up and down, as it were, on this issue in recent days. They have done a huge disservice to themselves, a huge disservice to politics and a huge disservice to those in the State who are suffering. I am afraid this episode has been very bad.

The last point I will make goes back to what an Teachta O'Dowd said earlier about the Opposition being wrong. How many times have we heard this from Fine Gael? I heard it from an Teachta O'Dowd when he was a Minister of State with responsibility for water charges. I was one of the Senators who spent 14 hours debating the Water Services Bill, mark 1, only to have to debate the Water Services Bill, marks 2, 3 and 4. We will see more Water Service Bills because the Government still has not finished making a mess of that issue. I have no doubt the Minister will return with his tail between his legs on the issue before us with a housing Bill, mark 2 or mark 3 because the Bill is fundamentally flawed. It will not work. It will not provide the affordability tenants need. It will not deal with the pressures on families, which will quickly become apparent. I have no doubt that the Minister will return on this issue but, unfortunately, for many of the families I represent, it will be too late.

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