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

I have a simple question for the Minister of State. Does he think that average rents in Dublin of €2,000 a month are acceptable? Does the Government think it is tenable to have average monthly rents of €2,000 or that areas such as mine have average monthly rents of €2,200? Does the Minister of State think that when the average industrial wage is about €35,000 it is tenable for the average rent in Dublin to require €24,000 or more in after-tax income to pay it? You only have to ask the question for it to be obvious that it is not tenable. However, the Government does not have a proposal to deal with it. It proposes to allow further increases to those rents. However you cut it - the Government says it is minimal or it is this or that - it is still allowing for further rent increases when rents are untenable.

We need to remember every single time we discuss this matter what its human consequences are. If you are without a roof over your head and you are on average or even above average earnings, and certainly if you are on below average earnings, you are in deep trouble if you go out looking for rental accommodation. It does not matter if you are working or have a family. Every week in my constituency, I see families, where the parents are working and the kids are at school, who cannot find or pay for accommodation at current rents because the housing assistance payment, HAP, limits do not go anywhere near that level. They may not have a roof over their head for many reasons. Maybe the landlord decided they had to leave because of grounds of sale or he is bringing a member of the family in or the situation is intolerable at home because of overcrowding. For how long can people live with their mother, father, grandmother and so on? There could be separation or domestic violence. If you need somewhere to live and you simply cannot pay that money, you are, by definition, in serious trouble. These people come into my clinic, as happened this week when a man just sat down and broke down in tears because he had been given a date to leave. He was looking for places and he cannot find anywhere because it is just not affordable.

What is the Government proposing to do about this? Please do not tell me that a couple of thousand cost-rental units next year will solve the problem or tell me about the amount of affordable housing. Between 60% and 70% of people, if not more, have earnings of the sort I am describing, where rents are just not payable. I do not want the Minister of State to tell me that what he proposes will see reductions in rent at any point in the near future. They will not. The market is not going to right this, so we need a radical intervention. The very least the Government can do in this situation is to say there will not be further rent increases. I will be honest and say to the rest of the Opposition, and I am not trying to score political points, that in my opinion that is not enough either because it does not do anything about the new accommodation that is going to be built. We are relying greatly on the hope that there will be a significant increase in supply - there will probably be some increase - but there is nothing at the moment to stop the new supply that comes on stream being charged at whatever rent people like. They can charge anything and nobody is making a proposal to do anything about it.

The Government should at a minimum support what Deputies Nash, Ó Broin, Cian O'Callaghan and the rest of us have been calling for, that there be no further rent increases in an untenable situation. However, we will have to go further or this will go on and on. We need to set rents at affordable levels. It is done in other countries. It can be done and it should be done. It has to be done otherwise we are not going to solve this problem. If somebody else can give me a solution that will achieve what needs to be achieved, I am all ears. However, there is no proposal on the table from the Government that offers any solution that will bring rents to levels that are affordable to ordinary working people in the short to medium term, or indeed the long term. There is just no proposal. As we grasp that fact, this miserable situation which is imposing horrendous suffering and anxiety on people and their children week in, week out will simply continue.

I am all ears but I want to know if the Minister of State thinks those rent levels are acceptable? If not, what is he going to do about it? What is his proposal? At the moment, there is none. As I said, I do not want him to tell me a couple of thousand cost-rental or affordable units will solve that. It simply will not do so.

See this speech in context