Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach will be aware that this morning, daft.iepublished its latest rent price report and the details are alarming. Average rents have soared to a new record high. Rents across the State increased by 13% in the past 12 months. Supply remains at an all-time low. There are only 3,084 properties available to rent across the entire Twenty-six Counties. The introduction of rent pressure zones last December was supposed to restrain rents and limit annual increases but that is not working. In fact, there is now a two-tier rental sector and the struggling renters are caught in the middle. In the meantime, 91,000 families are on local authority housing lists, 4,875 adults and 2,546 children are in emergency accommodation and five families a day are losing their homes. Currently, I am trying to help a pregnant mother. Her current accommodation will not be suitable after her baby is born and she is desperately seeking more suitable accommodation as she has two other children. She has been on the housing list for seven years. Another citizen with two children is living at home with her parents and her sister in a three-bedroom house. She is sharing a small bedroom with two children and has been on the housing list since 2013. Every Deputy here could tell such stories. My questions are simple. When will the Government release the funds to allow local authorities to deliver 10,000 real social housing units a year? When will the Government introduce real rent certainty to stop spiralling rents? When will the Taoiseach instruct the housing Minister to introduce the Focus Ireland amendment to stop the flow of rental properties from the market and stop renting families being pushed into homelessness? Have these issues been discussed by the Cabinet housing committee?

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