Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Shortly before the end of the term of the previous Fine Gael and Labour Party Government, a meeting of the Cabinet was called. It was the last meeting of that Cabinet. It was reported afterwards that the Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, told the members of the Cabinet that history would be kind to them and that their legacy would be seen as them having taken the reins when the troika was running the country and finishing their term in office with the troika gone and the reins back in the hands of the Irish Government. I disagree. The legacy of the Taoiseach and the Fine Gael Party over the two Governments will be one of having overseen a massive level of social inequality and the widening of that social inequality on its watch. The situation that pertains vis-à-vislandlords, tenants and the accumulation of rental profits is as good an example of that as any.

When I spoke during Leaders' Questions in the Dáil last week I remarked on the fact that the Central Statistics Office has come up with statistics that indicate rental profit - not rental income but clear rental profit - increased in the period from 2010 to 2015 from €1.6 billion to €2.7 billion. In other words, over a five-year period there was an increase in clear rental profit of more than €1 billion. When we talk of billions of euro, people's heads start to spin and they find it difficult to grasp precisely what we are talking about. If we were to break that figure down into a week-by-week figure, it means that over that five-year period there was an increase in clear rental profit of €20 million per week, not only on the odd week but every week on average. That is a transfer of wealth from people who have no property to people who, in the majority of cases, are at the very least comfortable or wealthy.

If we think about it, rent is dead money. People never get it back. At the end of the week tenants handed over €20 million extra and at the end of the year they handed over €1 billion extra but at the end of it all they owned no more property than they had at the start. The landlords still owned the property and still controlled the wealth. It is a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary people upwards to people who have more money and wealth and some of them have a great deal of it.

Those were the figures from 2010 to 2015. The CSO has left out of the equation what happened in 2015 to 2016. I represent Cork North-Central. In the Cork city area, rents have increased by nearly 15% more since then year on year. That brings us to this point where we have a proposal before the House, initiated by Fine Gael but now signed up to by Fianna Fáil, that those landlords, having accumulated those fabulous profits, would be limited to increases over the next three years that are four full percentages points above the rate of inflation. The leader of the Labour Party made the point in a debate last week that it was eight times the consumer price index, but it is much more than that because the consumer price index is currently minus 0.1% and the proposal is for a 4% increase or, compound, a 12.5% increase over the three-year period.

I will briefly comment on what Fianna Fáil signed up to today. Its spokespersons spoke in this House during the past few days and made contributions on radio, television and in the newspapers posing as the champions for the tenants. They said the rent cap increase is 2% or 6% over the three-year period. They were supporting a rent increase cap of 6% over a three-year period yesterday and now today, 24 hours later, they are signing up to a 12% increase. By any standards, that is a betrayal of ordinary people and of tenants.

The word "market" has been bandied about during this debate. It has been said that the rental market will tolerate this and the market will not tolerate that, that we have to respect the logic of the market and that we need to intervene in the market but not too much. When we think about a market it conjures up an image of having a lie-in on a Saturday morning and strolling down the cobblestoned street of one's town where people have their stalls set out or their goods and produce displayed in a pram. One buys a few apples and oranges, exchanges a few pleasantries and then takes a stroll down the town, having visited the market. It is a wonderful place to spend some time in and then to move on. However, the reality of the capitalist housing market in this country is very different. It is quite an ugly reality. On the one hand, €1 billion extra in clear profit is being secured year on year and on the other hand, more than 6, 500, including young children and, families, are homeless this Christmas. Those two things are completely connected. That is the reality of the capitalist market. There are a few other ugly realities that tenants may have to contend with over the next weeks and months. We read, for example, in the Irish Independenttoday about strategies being devised by landlords to try and maintain their profits and-----

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