Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important and necessary Bill. I absolutely support this legislation establishing a national rent authority and reducing rents to affordable levels by limiting them to a maximum of a quarter of households' monthly incomes.

As we all know, this is the last week the Dáil will sit before the recess. Although we have unnecessarily rushed through a lot of very important and heavy legislation, we have actually done very little to help to ease the cost of living for families. People are struggling to get by and keep up with continuous spiralling costs and it seems disingenuous of us to pass Bill after Bill without any of them addressing this. I welcome that People Before Profit has introduced this legislation to address properly the everyday struggle that people are facing. This legislation would have a huge impact on the many in this country who are part of Generation Rent. Due to the failed housing policies of successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, facilitated by the Labour Party and Green Party, which keep them in power, people do not have the option to buy their own homes and as a result are being forced into the rental sector. Renters make up a considerable number of today's population and the rises in rents they have been subjected to are completely unacceptable.

In my constituency, Donegal, the average rent increased by almost 20% in 2021 alone, and this has only got worse in 2022. The latest report from daft.ie shows that rents in Donegal rose by 23% in the first three months of 2022 by comparison with the same period last year, with the county's rents rising at a rate beyond those of any other major city in the country. There is a serious scarcity of homes in the area. On 1 May, there were just 36 homes available to rent between Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, which is a drop of nearly 40%. What is more, we will now have many more pushed into the rental market in Donegal due to homes being affected by mica. I have discussed in depth the many issues with the defective concrete blocks Bill and I know this will also be discussed in the Seanad this afternoon, but I want to point out again that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is not only failing mica-affected homeowners through thatlegislation, but he is also failing them by not implementing the legislation before us, that is, by not ensuring that rents cannot increase any further. I strongly believe rents should be linked to people's incomes and to ability to pay. It is only fair. We cannot go on allowing for rent to take up most of a person's income. It is not acceptable and it certainly is not sustainable.

I would like to condemn the Taoiseach's remarks on this Bill. He said it would undermine the capacity of many working people to afford many things. This type of thinking is completely ridiculous and nonsensical. Is the argument that people want to pay more? I can assure the House that this certainly is not the case. If the argument is that people would like to afford to pay their own rent then that is of course the case and that is why this legislation is so important. It is to allow people to do just that.

The Government has prioritised helping developers and vulture funds over their own citizens for far too long, but it is them that it really represents. It does not represent the citizens of this country but the vulture funds, developers and foreign companies. It is they that it wants to represent. In that case, it is doing it very well. It is doing a very good job of it. We are starting from the wrong place because we are giving the Government credit for actually wanting to help citizens. That is not what it wants to do. We are starting from the wrong place all the time and expecting the Government to come to us. We should actually be starting where the Government is starting from and then we would see that, probably in its own mind, it is doing a good job. This process needs to end. Government Deputies need to remind themselves who they are here to represent: citizens, not vulture funds. They need to start listening to their constituents, who are crying out for help. It is time for their voices to be prioritised. The Government now has the opportunity to do that by passing this Rent Reduction Bill. We know it will not do it. Even though the Minister of State who is present, Deputy Noonan, is a Green Party Minister of State and is probably sympathetic to what is in the Bill, he will not accept and pass it. That is the reality because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have decided that the vulture funds are the ones they are looking after. Those are the ones the Government will pursue.

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