Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is good to get back to Report Stage after all that time and to get back to discussing the amendments after dealing with the raft of formulas that came through in amendments to amendments to amendments and so forth.

The series of amendments we are discussing deal with so-called rent certainty. However, the only certainty is that rents will go up. The only unintended consequence of this Bill is that it might ease some of the pressure on the housing issue. That certainly would be unintended, because I do not believe that any of the agreements, formulas or strategies in terms of the rent pressure zones and so forth are about dealing with rents or assisting people with rents. It is about politically striking a balance on the highest amount of rent increase allowable that will be acceptable to landlords and institutional investors in order that they can continue to maximise their returns from rents, thus further penalising citizens who are already struggling to pay those rents.

In his explanations yesterday, and we also heard the same during Leaders' Questions, the Minister spoke about the number of landlords who have left the rental market in recent years. A figure of 23,000 or 24,000 was mentioned. However, since 2011 the number of tenancies in the State has increased by more than 43,000. The landlords mentioned were probably all in the buy-to-let sector or were unintentional landlords. Indeed, there are many people who bought apartments at a hugely inflated price in 2004 and 2005, had families since then and were obliged to move to a rental property and rent the apartment at a rent that was far less than the amount of the mortgage repayment. Despite being less, however, it is still unaffordable for the tenants concerned. These are the people who have probably left the rental market as a result of selling those properties at a huge loss or having them taken into receivership or having them repossessed by the various mortgage agencies in the State.

I believe this is really about ensuring rents continue to increase in order that the Government can attract international investors, so-called pension funds and speculators to buy rental properties across the State and, as David Ehrlich of IRES REIT said, ensuring they make profits that have never been seen elsewhere in the world's rental market. It is also about ensuring house prices are boosted and continue to rise in order that the balance sheets of the banks are massaged to make the banks appear more solvent than they are. That is what this exercise is about. It is not about assisting renters, making housing affordable for people or stopping the increasing incidence of family homelessness. If it was about dealing seriously with those issues, the Minister would not take this road of ensuring rents will increase by 4% each year for the next three years. We saw what happened when the changes were made in the budget for first-time buyers through the Revenue Commissioners. House prices went up overnight.

On the passing of this legislation rent is guaranteed to increase by 4% per year for people who cannot afford it. That should be seen in light of a recent report published by Savills Ireland which projected that rents in Dublin would be stagnant in the next year and that there was potential for them to fall rather than increase. However, this Bill will ensure they increase by 4%. That shows that the purpose of the Bill is not to deal with the crisis. Its purpose is to ensure institutional investors get massive returns, to attract them to set up here and to massage the banks' balance sheets, not to deal with citizens' difficulties. That is the big failing of the legislation. It is the big failing of Fine Gael because that party is completely market driven and beholden to the market. Fianna Fáil is similar. The only argument between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is whether rents will increase by 2% or 4% next year. The last two days of brinkmanship were about how much the increase in rents should be.

If the Government was serious about dealing with this issue, it would propose a rent freeze. If it was half serious about it, it would propose that the rent increase be linked to the consumer price index, CPI. However, the Government is not serious about it. It is sure and serious about one thing: ensuring there are exorbitant returns for investors in the rental market and getting more investors into that market. The reason that only Dublin was designated a rent pressure zone and not the commuter belt was to get those investors to move to the commuter belt and to stimulate them to buy rental properties there. If by some miracle at the end of this people happen to stay in their homes, that is the unintended consequence.

See this speech in context