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

Renters desperately need a break. Renters are paying rents that are far too high, and they are continuing to rise. Tenancies are increasingly insecure and there is a very significant rise in family homelessness, as evidenced in Dublin. The most recent daft.ierent register shows that the cost of an average rent for a whole year is €24,000. In Cork city, the Taoiseach's constituency, the cost of an average rental is €16,000. In the Minister of State's constituency of Longford-Westmeath, in Westmeath it is €14,000 a year and in Longford it is €11,000. In those two counties we are seeing faster increases in rent in the past 12 months than in some of the larger urban areas.

Sinn Féin has long argued for a package of measures that would not only address the spiralling cost of rent but would ensure genuine affordability is built into the housing system in the medium to long term. We desperately need a ban on rent increases for all private sector tenancies, existing and new, for three years. After that, we need to link private rents to an index such as wages so that it follows the movement of people's earnings. We need to cut rents. Our proposition is to put a month's rent back in renters' pockets and to do so through a refundable tax credit. Crucially, we need a level of investment in affordable cost rental to deliver at least 4,000 cost rental units a year at prices that are genuinely affordable, not the €1,200, €1,300 or €1,400 a month proposed under the Government's plans.

We are supporting the Bill today. It has the same objective as ours, although it is trying to achieve it through a different mechanism. I wish to respond to the Minister of State's point about whether what is being proposed is legally sound. When we were developing our policy package, we looked at a set of proposals not unlike the ones in the People Before Profit Bill. We took extensive informal legal advice. The advice was that it could be constitutional unilaterally to reduce rents. However, there are some problems. One is that it would have to be in line with the proportionality requirements in the Constitution. Another is that there would have to be an appeals mechanism for landlords and that would be potentially cumbersome and slow to set up, which could lead to long delays before the reductions in rent could be introduced. We were also advised that even if we could get around those constitutional challenges with a formal appeals mechanism for individual landlords, we could run into breach of contract issues for existing tenants and, therefore, there could be a whole plethora of litigation against tenants in the Commercial Court. For those reasons, we took the view that the quickest and most effective way to give renters the relief they desperately need is through a refundable tax credit. Having said that, I think anybody on this side of the House who makes a proposal to try to assist renters deserves to have it properly scrutinised. While we do not necessarily agree with the same mechanism as our colleagues in the Opposition, we think it deserves to be considered in the committee, as well as for there to be further legal consideration. On that basis, we are more than happy to support the Bill.

The Minister of State used the word "effective" a little too much in his speech, and he did so with a straight face. The difficultly is that a private renter's response would be that nothing the Government has done in the past two to six years has been effective. That is why rents are continuing to spiral upwards and security of tenure is ever more precarious. That is also why landlords, in particular semi-professional and accidental landlords, are leaving the market in droves, leading to an increase in notices to quit and homeless presentations.

The Minister of State also said the most effective way to help renters is to increase supply. That is not the case. A third of renters should be in social housing. They are subsidised by HAP, RAS and rent supplement. They do not want to be in the private rental sector. At least another third of the 300,000 private rental tenancies should be in affordable housing - affordable purchase and cost rental, so if we were trying to design a proper housing system, our private rental sector would not be 20% of the total housing system but probably around 10%. In fact, what two thirds of renters need today is social and affordable housing, not more high-end, high-cost, build-to-rent supply.

The Minister of State says supply is our main constraint. That, again, is not the case. That is a woefully inadequate way of understanding the housing system. To fix the housing crisis, we need the right kind of supply at the right price in the right place. Allowing the private rental sector to determine the answers to those questions is the reason we are in the current crisis. A far greater level of direct State investment in social, affordable rental and affordable purchase homes, as outlined in the Raise the Roof motion, tabled by the Opposition last night, is the way to go. That would require 20,000 public homes, between social and affordable housing need, every single year for a decade, not the far lower number that is being provided for by the Government.

We are happy to support the Bill. We urge the Government to realise it is getting it wrong in the private rental sector. The sooner it realises that, the better, not just for us but, crucially, for renters who need that break.

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