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

The programme for Government states the Government will listen to ideas from others about how to deal with the housing and homelessness crisis. When it introduced legislation on rent certainty we told the Government the measures would not control rents. We stated it would be necessary to set rents at affordable levels and introduced legislation to achieve this objective, which the Government voted down. Does the Taoiseach accept that, with a report from daft.ieshowing an 81% increase in rents since their low point and an increase of 10% in the past year, the Government's legislation has failed and we need legislation that will control and reduce rents to affordable levels? Incidentally, I disagree with my colleagues in Sinn Féin on controlling rents by linking rent increases to the consumer price index because that would not deal with the problem of new tenancies or rising rents. We need to set rents at affordable levels. Given what is happening, will the Government consider this as the only emergency response that would deal with rents, which are spiralling out of control?

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