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

Despite constant announcements, promises and plans from the Government about its intention to deal with the housing and homelessness crisis as a matter of top priority, every time the Minister examines that crisis or talks about it and every day that passes, the crisis gets worse. It is a crisis that the Government promised in its programme for Government would be resolved within 100 days yet a year on it continues to get worse, not better, on a daily basis.

Yesterday's news of the escalating crisis was the Daft.iereport showing that the biggest increase in rental inflation ever recorded by Daft.iesince its inception, 13.5%, occurred in the last quarter of 2016. Dublin rents are now rising at a rate of 15%. Rents in Dublin are up 65% from their lowest point and 14% from their highest point before the crash in 2008. Average rents in Dublin are now €1,643 per month. In Cork, they are €1,096 per month while in Galway, they are €975 per month. They are €875 per month in Limerick and €745 per month in Waterford. Even with the Minister's rent certainty measures, another 4% can be put on that. Another 4% on rents in Dublin will bring the average rent cost up to over €1,700. In every category of rental property and in every single area, the rent allowance or housing assistance payment limits are very considerably less than the average rental levels. We have now also record levels of people in the rental market, at 475,000, which is an increase of 150,000 over the past five years, yet there are fewer than 4,000 rental properties available for rent, and most of them are unaffordable to anybody on a low or middle income.

The Minister's plan is not working. Even if his plan is to deliver increased supply - the magical mantra of the market - and that he will have 20,000 extra residential units a year, if I understand his plan, there will still be a massive surplus of demand over supply, even if his plan works, for years to come. That means there will be no pressure on landlords to reduce rents. For years to come, even if the Minister's plan works, rents will not decrease, and they are already unaffordable and continue to rise. The Minister has got to change tack or the situation will get worse.

I want to know what the Minister intends to do about this problem. If the HAP limit in Dublin is €1,300 and average rents are €1,600, how is somebody supposed to afford that? What are they supposed to do when they have nowhere to live? It is just not doable. If we think about it, 60% or 70% of an average worker's income is required to pay rent if they can get a property, and they probably cannot even get a property. It is just not doable.

We are asking for a radical change in tack to pin rents back to affordable levels, which means retrospectively reducing rents to something like 2010 and 2011 levels, and then have the rent certainty operating from there as well as a dramatic increase in council housing provision.

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