Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We support the Bill. We see spiralling rents in every part of the country. I raised Knocknashee and Tobercurry with the Taoiseach a couple of months ago. People there were paying €800 a month in rent, then the landlord increased it to €1,500 a month overnight. That happened to ten people in a housing estate, because the landlord owned many houses there. The Government made an excuse that it is not part of a rent pressure zone, so there was nothing it could do about it. That is the situation for people in many parts of the country, with rents spiralling out of control. There are many decent landlords who keep rents at a reasonable rate, provided they have good tenants who look after the property with no problems. That is the case for many people.

There are landlords who will use every excuse they can to push rents through the roof. They are mainly doing that because of the example set by corporate landlords, which drives rents to exorbitant rates, especially in our cities. Many people are trying to rent in the city of Dublin, including people from the country looking for student accommodation, which is totally unaffordable. They might also try house shares, which have also become unaffordable. It is a serious crisis. The Government needs to recognise that soft talk will not solve this problem. We need real, determined action from the Government. The proposal in the Bill may be part of the solutions needed to drive change in this situation.

The other clear problem in the country that the Government has promised to address for so long is the income threshold for people to get on the housing list. It is very low in many parts of the country. It is absurd that a person has to be earning less than €25,000 per year to get onto the housing list in many counties. It is ridiculous and the Government needs to recognise that. We have to take action on these issues. If we do not take action on them, we will be left with a situation where matters continue to get worse. That is the experience of the vast majority of people across the country.

The Government has a choice to make. I hear the dog whistles about objections to houses. In the town of Ballinamore in my constituency, there is a little housing estate called Lahard. It is an old, county council housing estate, which has been there for years. Leitrim County Council proposed building ten houses on land at the far side of Lahard. Two councillors on Leitrim County Council opposed those ten houses being built. One was a local Fine Gael councillor and the other was a local Fianna Fáil councillor. All the other councillors supported it. In fairness, some were from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael too. That is the problem. We hear here that Sinn Féin is opposing the building of houses. In the vast majority of cases, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael stand in the way of progress with social housing.

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