Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

However, the proposition the Deputy has made is sound. It is really positive that the Bill deals with issues of adequacy and standards. Deputy Bacik is absolutely right to reference the report by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission and the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, on housing adequacy and particularly looking at the groups of people systemically disadvantaged as a result of both poor access to housing and of the very poor standard of housing when they do access it. I and other Opposition Deputies have called for a Dáil debate on that report and I hope that gets the support of the Business Committee tomorrow.

Crucially, there is the issue of affordability. Nothing in what the Government has done with its five items of legislation has improved affordability. In fact, most of those five Bills that the Minister of State mentioned actually stripped tenants of the Covid-19 protections that the former Minister, Eoghan Murphy, put in place. Tenants are in as precarious a position now as they were in pre-Covid times and, with inflation continuing to rise, have no greater protection under the rent pressure zones than when those zones were originally conceived.

The final comment I wish to make is on the issue of landlords leaving the market. We have lost more than 20,000 rental tenancies in the past four years. That is a direct result of Government policy and it is also driving family homelessness, as Deputies Howlin and Bacik mentioned, with 50% of notices to quit being on those grounds. We need a strategy. Many Deputies have ideas on how to deal with that and stop that disorderly exit but until the Government decides it is going to do something about it, that exit is going to continue. What is the consequence of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party housing policy for the rental sector now? It is rising rents and falling supply. Until the Government listens to the Opposition, that will continue.

See this speech in context