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

-----circumvent - thank you, Richard - the rental price caps. What kind of measures are being spoken of there? Landlords are planning to make tenants pay for the property tax where previously they were not asked to pay it, to pay for car parking spaces, and we know they are not cheap, where previously they did not have to pay for them, and to pay key money at the start of a rental arrangements where previously they were not asked to pay key money.

The other spectre that raises itself in the capitalist market is the prospect of landlords who are concerned that the rental caps will apply to their city in seven weeks' time at the end of January, 11 weeks' time at the end of February or 15 weeks' time at the end of March and who will use the intervening period ruthlessly to jack up the rents and screw more money out of the poor tenant. It is a weakness of the proposal that has been signed up to by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil that they have not made provision for stopping that by saying that this measure is coming into place tonight.

We have tabled an amendment we intend to press later in which we have set the potential for rent increases at 0%. The Ministers argue against that and state that while it is well intentioned, it will not work because it does not grapple with the realities of the market and that there will be a lesser supply of housing if bold measures in defence of tenants of that kind are implemented. That argument needs to be further examined. Are the Minsters arguing that there will be a flight of capital and that landlords will be queueing up at the airport to leave the country and take their houses with them?

The houses will still be there. What if the landlords say they will not allow their houses to stay on the market? I do not see why they should say that because there are still big profits be made. If the landlords, however, remove their houses from the market, why can we not implement a strong and aggressive vacant house tax to provide them with an incentive to put the properties on to the rental market?

The key point that should be made in response to this is that there needs to be a huge increase in the supply of affordable homes and social housing provided by the State. One can increase the supply all one wants to at the top end of the market. It will have little or no effect on the rent rates around the country. It is when one applies the extra supply of housing through affordable homes and social housing at the bottom and middle end of the market, in areas where the surge of demand is, then one brings downward pressure to bear on rent rates. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil will not do that, however, because they have set their face against those practical common-sense proposals being made from the left and others in the House. They are wedded to an ideology which points in a different direction. It is primarily the ideology of landlordism, which is not a surprise, given the number of landlords who fill the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil benches. It is also the ideology of support for the capitalist market which is their god. They worship at the altar of the market. The iron logic of the market is that one has to feed the gods through increased rents. If that means more people become homeless, more people hanging on by their fingernails and more people spending nearly half their wages every week on rental accommodation to put a roof over their heads, so be it. That is the policy from the benches across the House and on the Fianna Fáil benches to my left.

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