Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Social Democrats will support this Bill going on to Committee Stage. Any issues with it, technical or otherwise, can of course be engaged with then. While we would take a somewhat different approach in respect of solutions in this regard, we very much support the direction, intent and principle of this legislation.

There is a real lack of urgency from the Government on this issue. It seems to stem from a lack of a fundamental awareness of what is happening right now. We are probably within days of reaching a record in the number of people homeless. The official figures do not reflect the reality. It is becoming increasingly difficult for people who are homeless to get into emergency accommodation. With regard to the official figures for emergency accommodation, I am hearing reports from all around the country from people who are homeless and looking for emergency accommodation but who are being turned away by local authorities. They are being told that emergency accommodation is simply full and that they cannot access it. Some local authorities are coming up with a myriad of different criteria, which are all new and grossly unfair. Those local authorities are using these criteria to avoid providing emergency accommodation, as they are obliged to.

People living in tents are being refused access to emergency accommodation. Recently, I was assisting someone and Dublin City Council, DCC, stated this person could not prove homelessness. This was a person living in a tent and who had had this certified by one of the homeless outreach groups. Yet DCC was trying to say that the person had not provided proof of homelessness. This is how ridiculous this situation is getting and, therefore, the numbers for those in emergency accommodation do not in any way reflect the reality of the situation. Even regarding those numbers in emergency accommodation, however, we are probably within days of those reaching record levels. People are becoming homeless primarily because rents are so high and because of a lack of affordable supply and affordable rental supply. This is causing great misery and trauma. Children are living miles away from their friends and their schools. They have no stable home life, with their parents doing the best they can to support them and to hold down jobs in the middle of all of it.

We get the sense that this human trauma does not seem to impact sufficiently on the Government. It seems to be only economic arguments around housing that impact. It is only when we see the knock-on effects in respect of childcare providers not being able to provide places anymore for children, which means people not being able to get into the workplace or withdrawing from it, and when we see the issues affecting teachers or those working in the hospitality industry - and much of that sector is simply not opening at certain times because it cannot get workers - that we wonder if the Government will act urgently as a response to these issues. We do not, however, see urgent action from the Government on this issue.

I will address a couple of the points the Minister made. He spoke about landlords exiting, which is a real problem. There are two key drivers in this regard. One of them is capital appreciation and the rise in house prices. We heard news again today that house prices increased by more than 14% in the past year. This of course is driving many landlords to exit because this is a good time for them to realise the capital appreciation in the value of their homes and, therefore, if we want to stop them exiting, we must do something about rising housing prices and affordability in that context. Of course, though, one of the key drivers of landlords exiting in the past few years, which the Government does not mention when it addresses the problem, have been the measures that Fine Gael, and indeed the Labour Party, brought in between 2011 and 2014. There was an exemption to capital gains tax, CGT, for people who bought in as landlords or investors. That exemption could only be availed of if the landlord sold up before the end of 2021. Therefore, Fine Gael brought in these CGT exemptions that have been helping to drive landlords out. More than €500 million of CGT exemptions incentivised landlords to sell up and get out. No mention is made of this of course. When we are told that rent regulation is a problem, then, I feel that such an attempt to blame rent regulation for landlords exiting is a form of gaslighting, when in fact these CGT incentives have been a key part of it.

Let the Government not pat itself on the back too much in respect of RPZs and the associated regulations. There are two key problems with this aspect. The first is that all over the country those areas not in RPZs are not included in those measures. People have been faced with rent increases of up to 75% and 80% outside of RPZs. These people are living in areas that will never become rent RPZs because of the way the rules are written. In rural parts of the country, it is unlikely there will ever be a rent level that will exceed the average outside the greater Dublin area. This is how the rules are constructed. Therefore, for an area in County Donegal, for example, to become an RPZ, it would have to achieve an average rent level above those we see in Galway city, Cork city and Limerick city. Is it the Government’s policy that it will undertake no rent regulation in those parts of the country until the rents exceed the average, which include those city areas? That is absurd. Equally, however, many of these areas will never qualify as RPZs because there is not sufficient data. They do not have more than 30 new rental tenancies registered each quarter, which must be the case to qualify as an RPZ. These rules are, therefore, designed to fail. Regarding those areas where we have RPZs, let us be clear that a great number of breaches are occurring. Greystar was this week reported as seeking double-digit rent increases. It is already charging rents of between €2,140 and €5,220 per month in Dublin. Those are phenomenal rents.

Let us not kid ourselves that more and more supply at the higher end is doing any good. We can walk out of here, go down the quays and look at some of the high-end supply any evening. Later in the summer and during the winter evenings, we will see lights on in approximately one third of the apartments in those developments. We will never see lights on in the other sections of those buildings because they are empty and vacant. That can be seen in my constituency. There are high vacancy rates in the newer developments on Griffith Avenue. People on incomes of more than €80,000 have been turned away. Those people have been told they do not meet the financial criteria for those developments. Therefore, we need affordable supply and not high-end, high-rent supply that is left vacant. Data from the CSO told us that 20% of our rental supply was empty on census night. More than 35,000 rental properties were completely empty so what we need is affordable supply.

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