Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am indeed. I will have nine minutes and they will each have three. I will look into the matter Deputy Ó Broin mentioned. Where I was today in Adamstown, I saw fantastic work that has taken place and continues to take place. This is also the case in other parts of south Dublin like Killinarden where the Deputy's own party opposed 100 social homes and 300 affordable homes as part of another LIHAF scheme.

I will be reviewing how LIHAF works but delivery on the ground is what is crucial.I thank the Deputy for bringing forward the Bill and providing us with an opportunity to discuss the residential rental sector as it stands in Ireland today. I will not support the Bill because I do not believe that banning rent increases is the solution to the current housing supply crisis we face.

I note with concern that Deputy Ó Broin did not avail of the services of the parliamentary legal advisers. The Bill he has produced today is a tweaked version of the Sinn Féin Rent Freeze (Fair Rent) Bill 2019. I debated the Bill in the House when I was in opposition and I stated during that debate that I was willing to allow the Bill to proceed to pre-legislative scrutiny to provide an opportunity to tease out its ramifications, for example, the constitutionality or otherwise of the Bill and its potential impact in particular on supply throughout the country and not just in the rent pressure zones. It is not clear to me that Sinn Féin has made any attempt to ensure the Bill is legally sound or whether, as a base requirement, it is, in fact, constitutional. I suspect it has not and I suspect the potential impacts of the Bill have not been researched. Sinn Féin does not seem to accept that a ban on rent increases will not increase the supply of rental accommodation. Supply is a key constraint. Rents rise when demand outstrips supply. If Deputy Ó Broin had sought the assistance of the parliamentary legal advisers available to him to draft the Bill, he would to know this.

We need to note that in the North, where Sinn Féin is in power, in February this year the Minister for Communities announced an increase in rents in one of the first acts of the Executive after its three year hiatus. At the 11th hour, that same Sinn Féin Minister for Communities decided to defer the increase but it will actually come into effect in a short 13 days' time. There is one rule in the North and one rule in the South, as I have mentioned with regard to Killinarden.

On taking office I sought to quickly assist tenants. Covid-19 has not been easy for renters or private landlords. In my first month in office, I sought to act not just on rent increases but on tenancy terminations also. I sought to help those most in need of help on foot of Covid-19 and those facing potential homelessness on foot of tenancy termination caused by rent arrears. Incredibly, the Bill makes no reference to terminations or evictions. It was my belief in opposition and it is my belief now in government that we need to strike a balance between restricting the level of rent tenants pay and keeping ordinary landlords in the system. As Deputy Ó Broin rightly said this evening, if we look at the RTB data, we see that we lost almost 7,700 tenancies year on year to the first quarter of 2020. This is a significant number that must be kept in check.

It is worth remembering that 70% of landlords own just one rental property and 86% of landlords own one or two rental properties. These measures, while possibly well-intentioned, would drive more decent landlords out of the market, reducing supply and exacerbating the problem further. The simple fact of the matter is that we need residential rental accommodation. We have a well-regulated sector and rental properties need to be maintained. It is not in the interests of a landlord to mistreat a tenant, and any landlord who does should be and is liable to stern prosecution, with sanctions of up to €30,000 for those who breach rental pressure zone guidelines. If we were to introduce a ban on rent increases, we would see more exits from the sector, thus stifling that much needed supply and causing an even greater problem in the sector. I believe Deputy Ó Broin knows this but the truth of it does not suit his narrative.

The temporary prohibition on rent increases and terminations under the Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Act 2020 expired on 1 August. Sinn Féin's response was a blanket ban on all rent increases. The Government recognises this is not possible and introduced measures targeted at those most in need, which I have just covered. If we examine the two different approaches we see that section 2 of the Sinn Féin Bill proposes to ban increases in rent for existing and new tenancies for three years from enactment. There is no mention of evictions, no mention of Covid and no mention of rent freezes for those who need them most.

The Government's response is more comprehensive and targeted and is based on real independent research and advice. As the Deputy mentioned, we have commissioned ESRI research on trends in rental price inflation and the introduction of rental pressure zones in Ireland. As part of the rent index series, the RTB and the ESRI were asked to produce a short run index covering the period from January to June this year. The key findings from the report show that rental price inflation has moderated considerably since the pandemic began. National month-on-month declines were registered in three of the four months since March this year. Rents in Dublin fell year-on-year in April, May and June, and rent inflation outside Dublin also dropped sharply. Tenancy registrations with the RTB are also markedly down.

Furthermore, the Department commissioned from the ESRI a research paper exploring the short run implications of the Covid-19 pandemic and its effect on the private rental market. That report showed a very marginal increase in rent arrears and a stabilisation of tenancies, coupled with the fact the Government introduced the emergency rent supplement. I urge anyone who is watching and who is in difficulty with rent arrears or paying rent to avail of this emergency rent supplement.

The Deputy might wish to share with us the findings of any independent research he and his party commissioned in the production of the Bill. I am genuinely interested in examining it to see the research behind the Bill and the ramifications of a blanket ban for supply on the market. The Bill presented by the Deputy focuses solely on rent increases. There are no measures to address tenancy terminations or the impact of Covid-19. Prior to the summer recess, with the support of my Government colleagues and acting on evidence in the ESRI research, I introduced significant tenancy protections in the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act 2020. This protects from eviction those who need it most and bans rent increases for those who need this protection. The Deputy and his party voted against these protections. Not only did they do so but they tried to convolute it further and make it harder for those who are to be protected. Deputy Ó Broin wanted people to have to declare themselves homeless rather than a simple declaration that they had been economically impacted by Covid-19. Deputy Carthy went on radio and spoke in the Dáil to suggest that we follow the lead of President Trump and make people jump through multiple hoops before they would be afforded any protection. Instead, and in recognition of the fact that Covid-19 has been hard on tenants and individual landlords, I put in place much more targeted protections that protect the most vulnerable tenants while allowing the rental sector to resume activity in as near a normal manner as possible. This is the responsible and correct thing to do.

Any notice of termination grounded on rent arrears will be invalid if the warning notice has not been served to the RTB and the tenant. Anyone who self-declares that their income and their ability to pay rent has been affected by Covid-19 will be protected. These are real protections. They are lawful protections. They are protections that have been implemented and they are working. A core principle of the Government is that everyone should have access to good-quality housing to purchase or rent at an affordable price in sustainable communities that offer a quality of life. This is what we need to deliver. The key to resolving the residential rental sector is supply. This is why in the budget for 2020, to which the Deputy alluded, social housing delivery increased to €2.63 billion, which is €258 million more than 2019. Even in this year of Covid, when we have had a shutdown, we will deliver more than 10,000 social housing units and we are pushing every week to ensure that public house building is delivered through our partners in the approved housing bodies and local authorities.

We are interested in real delivery of real protections for tenants from eviction in the Bill the Deputy and his party voted against. We will have real delivery of extra homes through the most ambitious voids programme we have seen in a number of years, which will bring back 2,500 social homes into use this year through the July stimulus plan. There is real delivery to empower local authorities to build themselves by raising the discretionary cap to €6 million. This has already been done. There is real delivery to help those people whom the Deputy says he wants to help buy homes by increasing the help to buy grant to €30,000. A total of 19,500 people have availed of this grant and the Deputy opposes it. He has publicly opposed it and he opposed it in the budget. He has opposed affordable housing in the House also. There is also real delivery in the call for housing the Government brought forward to focus on single properties and large properties to drive down homelessness for those who have been homeless for far too long. We will keep working on this and we will deliver as a Government in the area. We are ambitious for the country in resolving our housing crisis.

This Bill will not help and the Deputy actually knows that. That is why we are opposing it.

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