Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Reference has been made to the possibility that Dublin City Council will decide to increase rents for council tenants. South Dublin County Council has already decided to do this. I want to ask the Tánaiste about what is quite an outrageous decision by his party, Fine Gael, together with Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, to support an increase in rents. There has been a cruel increase of €3 a week across the board regardless of income, combined with an additional €10 a week for a set of old age pensioners. This is a heartless attack on some of the most vulnerable people on low incomes. It is an attack, presumably supported by the Tánaiste, which underscores the nature of Fine Gael and the Government's housing policy as being to protect those who have it and attack those who do not.

Last Saturday, the Taoiseach, not for the first time, declared that opposition to the Government's position on housing and criticism of its approach on housing is ideological, unlike the Government's position. In the Dáil on Tuesday, he argued that anyone opposed to giving away public land to private developers has an ideological position, whereas the Government has no ideology at all. It is just a bunch of pragmatists doing their very best to resolve the crisis who have, by pure accident, stumbled into a situation where they preside over the greatest level of homelessness and housing crisis in the history of the State at the very same time as we have the highest levels of rents and profits for landlords and developers. It is an approach to ideology seen in the kings and queens who ruled the world in the past. They did not say they had a feudal ideology that justified why they ruled. They said they had a divine right to rule, just like the Government believes the market has the divine right to rule and landlords and developers have a divine and constitutional right to maximise their profits.

Those who benefit from the Government's ideology are extremely obvious. Last year, landlords received record rents of €13 billion. This was up from €5.5 billion in 2009. The largest corporate landlord in Ireland, Ires REIT, paid nothing in corporation tax last year on profits of €120 million. Developers continue to profit massively, with combined sales last year increasing by 25%. The losers are everybody affected by the housing crisis, including tenants affected by rents of more than €2,000 a month in Dublin, young people who cannot afford a home and families struggling to access mortgages. Now there are new victims. These are council tenants who will be hit by €156 extra in rent annually and the pensioners attacked by having to pay another €676 per year. Does the Tánaiste agree with this attack? Does he agree with attacking those on the lowest incomes in our society at the same time as protecting the landlords and developers? People will not accept it. They will mobilise on the streets on 5 December at 12 noon at the Garden of Remembrance. Council tenants should participate.

I hope people will come along to the protest called by Solidarity for Monday, 9 December, at the council offices to build a campaign to oppose this attack as part of building a wider movement on the housing crisis.

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