Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Let us be clear that these amendments are in order. I was pleasantly surprised that they were found to be so, but the fact is they were and, as such, I do not really accept the Minister's response. It is tricky for us to bring forward amendments to this type of legislation without finding ourselves out of order. There is a difficulty in trying to do things that were not directly envisaged by the Minister, as author of the legislation. If there are any technical problems with any aspect of these amendments, the Minister could overcome them if he had the will to do so. His response does not really answer the substantive point. I am not saying that what the Minister said is wrong but nor am I accepting it is right.

The amendments represent our effort to extend the protections that were provided under the 2020 Act. When the Minister says that legislation has ceased to operate, I do not quite know what he means. There is still an emergency period operating in that some tenants are being protected under this Bill. We want that protection extended to all tenants. The Minister has not addressed the substantive point that the vast majority of tenants, who should be protected in this Bill, are not being protected from the prospect of rent increases they simply cannot afford.

The Minister can tell me if he disagrees. I do not think, however, that anybody could seriously disagree that the amounts of rent that are being paid by the vast majority of people in this country, particularly in Dublin, Galway, Cork and Waterford, the epicentres of the housing crisis, are utterly obscene and unaffordable for ordinary working people. Does the Minister accept that? I would be interested to know because, to me, it is blatantly obvious. Rent of €2,000 or more a month is just not acceptable. How are ordinary working people supposed to pay that? As I have pointed out, of a renter's after-tax income, this amounts to €24,000 a year. That is just obscene.

Does the Minister accept that most people cannot afford to pay these amounts? They most certainly cannot afford to have an 8% rent increase on top of that - a very real prospect they are facing - or a 12% increase at the end of the emergency period for even the small group that will be protected by this Bill. They simply cannot pay. We need rents that are affordable and that ordinary people can pay.

I cited the St. Helen's Court complex as a tangible example in this regard. The people who are facing homelessness and who have always paid their rent, were paying amounts of €900 or €1,000 a month. That is a lot, but they could just about manage it. They are being evicted because the owners of Mill Street Projects, the vulture fund, want to charge double that amount and they know they have to evict the tenants to do so. They have spent four years driving those tenants out and trying to circumvent the legislation. They have finally found a way to do it and they are going to put those people out on the street. There is no protection for them and there is no social housing in the area. There is no other rental accommodation in the area that they can afford. Where is the protection for them? Is the Minister going to protect them and other tenants like them? That is the question. That is what all those renters out there want to know. If there is something technically wrong with our amendment, I ask the Minister to tell us what the Government's response is going to be to protect them against evictions or unaffordable rents. People need to know.

Earlier, we outlined to the Minister the statistic that 38,000 people have gone through homeless accommodation since 2014, which equates to almost 1% of the adult population. That is absolutely shocking. There are probably several thousand people who are going to face eviction in the coming weeks and months. They are in dire trouble. Once a person is evicted, he or she is, by definition, in dire trouble. Does the Minister accept that? Does he accept that if a person is evicted, he or she is in serious trouble? What is he going to do to protect those who are in that situation? There is an urgency to this question. What we are doing is not what Deputy Higgins described on Second Stage as opposition for opposition's sake. We are reflecting the reality of what renters are facing. We are asking, with these amendments, for the Government to insert into the legislation protections that would prevent people being put into a crisis situation over the coming weeks and months while the more thoroughgoing legislation to which the Minister referred is prepared. It would be interesting to know what will be in that legislation to address these issues. Why would the Minister reject the idea that we freeze things now until that more comprehensive legislation is introduced? I ask him to explain that to me. I do not understand why the Government would create a window for unfair rent increases and evictions.

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