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

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following:

“notes that:

— the Government is fully committed to tackling high rents and ensuring an increase in the supply of affordable high quality rental accommodation through continued significant capital investment, including Cost Rental and other means and in a manner that respects the security of tenure for renters by ensuring equity and fairness for landlords and tenants;

— the provisions of the Residential Tenancies Acts 2004 to 2021 relating to Rent Pressure Zones are due to expire at the end of December, and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage will bring forward comprehensive new protections for tenants, balanced with constitutional property rights in the coming months;

— the Government is committed to improving the security of tenure for tenants through legislating for tenancies of indefinite duration, subject to legal advices;

— the new Affordable Housing Bill 2020, sets out the legislative basis for Cost Rental for the first time in the history of the State;

— the first Cost Rental units will be delivered this year and significantly expanded by the Government over the coming years;

— the Government has increased funding and capacity for the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) to help further protect tenants, and the significant ongoing sustained funding provided to local authorities to inspect rental properties and the strong legislative framework under which they currently operate has made a positive contribution to supporting the ongoing improvement of standards and to ensuring the availability of an increasingly high quality stock of rental accommodation in Ireland;

— as per the commitment in the Programme for Government: Our Shared Future, the new whole-of-Government plan for housing ‘Housing for All’, that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage intends to publish later this year, will ensure that the provision of an adequate supply of high quality affordable rental accommodation remains a cornerstone of the Government’s policy under the plan;

— the Government has provided, and will continue to provide, enhanced income supports and protections for tenants, particularly the most vulnerable tenants, that are necessary during this pandemic; and

— the Government keeps the operation of the Residential Tenancies Acts 2004 to 2021 under constant review and will make any necessary enhancement to the legal enforceability of RTB determination orders, in consultation with the RTB.”

I welcome the opportunity to discuss and debate important issues in the private rental market. As Deputies may know, the programme for Government sets out that improving standards, security and affordability for renters is an absolute key priority for this Government and for me as Minister with responsibility for housing.

I turn first to the matter of affordability. We are acutely aware that in recent years rents have begun to reach levels that have put very real pressures on individuals, families and households throughout the country but especially in our major cities and urban centres. However, we have a plan to tackle this and I want generation rent to become a generation that owns and the Government measures we published just yesterday through the Affordable Housing Bill 2021 show in real terms how we are going to be able to help people get out of that rental trap and to help generation rent to own their own homes at an affordable rate. Also within the Bill we are, for the first time, putting a cost-rental national scheme on a primary legislative footing and I hope the Members opposite who have tabled this motion will see their way to supporting some real measures that are going to have a real impact in real legislation, backed by real money and which will have a real positive impact for thousands of people across this country. I welcome the support of any Member opposite for the measures the Government is bringing through within the first year of its taking office. We will have State-backed affordable ownership at the national level, a national cost-rental scheme, a shared equity scheme that is going to help first-time buyers bridge that affordability gap and we are going to expand Part V to 20% to protect the 10% social and have an additional 10% for affordable housing. These are real measures for real people that will actually work.

On a number of occasions we have debated the three-year rent freeze again proposed by Sinn Féin and debated here again this afternoon. It has been said before that a blanket ban on any rent increases in all likelihood - I think Deputy Ó Broin knows this - would face a significant legal challenge as has just occurred in Berlin, where rent freezes have recently been overturned by the constitutional court. It could also have another unintended consequence that Members opposite should also know, namely, that it will lead to those individual landlords continuing to leave the market. Whether we like it or not the private rental market is in place in Ireland, there are about 300,000 tenancies and we need to ensure that it supports the tenancies that are there. I want people to move into home ownership and out of renting, into secure public homes. That is why we passed the single biggest housing budget in the history of the State, to deliver 12,750 social homes in a year. We in Fianna Fáil, together with our Fine Gael and Green Party colleagues, brought this forward and the party opposite opposed it at budget time.

The provisions of the Residential Tenancies Act relating to rent pressure zones, RPZs, are due to expire at the end of December. I have advised Deputies, and do so again, that I am currently examining what might be brought forward in terms of comprehensive protections for tenants to tackle high rents, obviously balanced to ensure that there is constitutional provision there as well. I am doing that in the coming months and intend to bring the housing and residential tenancies Bill to the House in the autumn. It provides us with a real opportunity to look at what will replace the RPZs, what may have worked well, what did not work and also how we can see good a commitment that we have in the programme for Government for secure tenancies and tenancies of indefinite duration which we also want to do.

On cost-rental in particular, I note the motion calls for 4,000 cost rental units in one year, next year, and to make financial provision for that. I have started the cost rental scheme this year. There are eight schemes across the country, in Dublin, Cork and the greater Dublin area that will be tenanted this year. It is achievable where the capacity is in place. That is 440 in total, including the 50 on Enniskerry Road. However, Sinn Féin has pulled 4,000 out of the sky and says we can deliver them in 2022 without saying where, who is going to build them or how long it will take. Deputy Ó Broin alluded to some costs – it is about €1.3 billion. Is that on top of the 20,000 public homes that he says he will build in a given year, forgetting about how the capacity may not be built up to do that and about the cost of those 20,000 homes? Would these 4,000 homes be delivered next year on top of that? Is it on top of the affordable housing scheme that Sinn Féin brought forward that would actually exclude the nurse, the garda and the average worker from owning their own home? A person would not own it at the end of the Sinn Féin scheme and the party would actually tell the person who he or she can sell his or her home back to, what he or she can do to the home or whether he or she rents it in future. That is not home ownership.

There are measures contained within this motion that we intend to address. We intend to address them in a realistic and responsible way. That is why I want to get cost-rental up and running this year and I welcome the support of the Deputies who have spoken today and hope they will see fit to support real affordable measures on rent and on purchase that this Government is bringing forward in the coming months and intends to have passed by this summer.

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