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

Again, and again and again this Government takes the side of the corporate landlords and the property developers. Today, it is opposing this motion to freeze rents and tackle those landlords who are breaking the rules when it comes to minimum standards. Why would the Government oppose a rent freeze? Why would it oppose inspecting rental properties to ensure they are meeting minimum standards? The only people who benefit from the Government's approach are rack-renting, slum landlords. They are being given the green light by the Government today to increase their rents and to continue to break the minimum housing standards. That is who this Government serves. What we need is a left Government with socialist policies to stand up to the big landlords and to take the side of renters and those who are looking to access housing. Simply freezing rents is not enough. We need to cut rents, ban evictions, build public housing and nationalise the properties of the big corporate landlords.

The Government’s countermotion shamefully promotes its so-called affordable housing plans. Yesterday, we heard so-called affordable housing could be as much as €500,000 for an apartment. Half a million euro may be affordable to the Minister, but it is completely out of reach for many ordinary workers in this country. It is an Orwellian approach from Fianna Fáil. War is peace, spin is truth, and half a million euro for an apartment is affordable.

The so-called shared equity part of the proposals is custom built to drive up house prices. It is done at the behest of the lobbying of private developer organisations. The Minister's own Department warned that a similar scheme drove up prices by 6% in London and yet he ignored that, claiming it was only 1%. What we need is genuinely affordable housing, public housing on public land available to all, with rents linked to income. Housing should be a right not an investment opportunity for the vultures and the speculators.

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