Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This week daft.iepublished its latest quarterly rent report. It confirms that the Minister, Deputy Coveney's rent pressure zones simply are not working. Average rents are up 13% across the State to approximately €1,131 per month. Rents in Louth are up an astonishing 18%. In Dublin city, Kilkenny and Laois, they are up 16%; in Longford, 15%; and in Donegal and Galway, 14%. In my own constituency, Dublin Mid-West, in Clondalkin and Lucan, new rents are now at €1,800 per month. That is a staggering €21,000 a year in rent. The situation outside the rent pressure zones is even worse. Thanks to the Minister's badly designed rental scheme, we now have a two-tier rental market.

My view is this is the Minister, Deputy Coveney's fault. He set his face against real rent certainty last year on four separate occasions. He opposed the Focus Ireland amendment to the Planning and Development Bill that would have kept renting families in their homes and rental properties in the market. He continues to push more and more families who should be in social housing into HAP, increasing demand on the private rental sector, and he continues to drag his heels on the urgent need to regulate Airbnb properties, despite Dublin having over 6,500 short-term lets but only 1,200 rental properties.

Light-touch regulation does not work. The time has come for Government to urgently review its failing rental market strategy and to put in place measures that will give landlords and tenants the security and stability they so desperately need.

While the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, will not be able to answer those questions today, I urge her to bring those thoughts back to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Minister of State, Deputy English, and impress on them the need for serious change to give struggling renters a real break.

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