Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill and the general topic, which is timely given that daft.iepublished a report yesterday.

It demonstrated the chaos in the current rental market. Today, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, was quoted as saying that rising rents are causing much anxiety. That is a great understatement. There is sheer panic. Frustration is spilling over because of the stress experienced by individuals and households, including children. Does the Minister for Finance really understand the degree of anxiety felt by a person who faces a cumulative 36% increase in their rent over a period? This was another report on top of a pile of previous reports for each quarter going back years. Each time one of these reports is published, it details yet more rent increases. It clearly shows a sector which has been allowed to spiral out of control. The State's inactivity of building the required level of housing has contributed to the shortfall in housing and rising rents.

When is the right time to shout stop? Rents are at an unsustainably high level. The Social Democrats have called for an immediate nationwide rent freeze, but we recognise that freezing rents at such high levels will not be a complete solution - or indeed any solution - for people who are at the pin of their collar. However, it would ensure that we will not be here next quarter or the one after that to discuss the increase being 38% or 40%. There must be a point at which we say stop; we think that we reached this point long ago. Deputy Healy has been calling for an emergency to be declared on this for several years and this legislation would give some teeth to that.

I listened to the chairperson of one of the landlords' associations on radio yesterday morning. He said that it would be unfair to force purchasers of buy-to-let properties to keep existing tenants in situ. In the current situation, I fundamentally disagree. We need emergency responses. What would be unfair would be to turf out a tenant who had met all the terms of his or her tenancy agreement and force him or her either into homelessness or to face a significant rent hike at another property.

We must take a sustainable view on this. We cannot allow market forces to continuously pile people onto the streets or into emergency accommodation. That is in no one's interest. It damages the social fabric of our country but also the economy. We can see significant societal damage. There cannot be one of us here who does not experience families coming to us in panic. They tell us things like "Homelessness was never something I expected to happen to somebody like me". That is typical of what people say. When they come in first, they say they have four months notice. Invariably, one sees them in the following weeks and one tries to give them as much advice as possible and try to find alternative accommodation but it is just not there. One can see the deterioration in people from the time they receive the eviction notice to when they either find somewhere or they face having to find somewhere to store their possessions or perhaps find temporary accommodation.

We must be realistic; we are not just talking about a few people. Typically, we see couples where both are at work. We see families, individuals, ordinary workers. The average rent in Dublin is now €1,968 a month, €32 shy of €2,000 a month often for fairly average homes. We are not talking about mansions, we are talking about typical homes. It takes only a basic understanding of economics to know that if that figure continues to rise, there will be hundreds if not thousands more who will find themselves forced into homelessness.

Talking about percentages can be easy but, in practical terms, the average rent in Dublin is now close to €2,000, which means that a family or a person renting in Dublin is paying close to €24,000 on rent, before utilities, food, the cost of getting to work and other costs. Even if someone took home €50,000 after tax, which is a good income, rent would still account for more than 50% of their income. For those of more modest means, the reality is even more stark. There are people paying 60% or 70% of their income to put a roof over their head. People who run the food stalls in town say that people are coming to them looking for food who are not homeless. What does that tell us? The knock on effects for the rest of society become obvious. Greater demands on wages means less disposable income circulating in the economy, consumer activity decreases and businesses suffer as a result. That is before we begin to consider the societal and human cost of forcing people into everyday poverty, just because they are trying to put a modest roof over their head. It is also unsustainable, as the Minister knows, from the perspective of rent assistance or HAP because rents are spiralling.

The time for hand-wringing is long gone. There must be emergency measures to put a full stop on this while a more accelerated construction programme is under way. We hear that close to 10,000 individuals, adults and children, are in homelessness but that is not the full story. Others during the same year will also have experienced homelessness. In the past year, an additional 4,000 people will have had experienced homelessness and gone through that panic. Numbers are important. There is a big thing about trying not to get to 10,000 and numbers have been disputed. When we see the scale of what we are discussing, when one adds those who have experienced homelessness and those who are currently in homelessness, it can be called nothing other than an emergency.I really want it to get better and to be able to compliment the Minister and say that things are working but I am sorry that I cannot. Based on what I see, anecdotally, if I were to say if things are getting better or worse, I would say that it is far worse this year than last year. It is almost impossible to find properties for people to rent and the levels of rent that are being demanded are not possible for ordinary people.

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