Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I explained earlier, we made this decision because we believe it is the right one in the public interest, which is the only reason we would make a decision of this nature. We weighed up the pros and cons, listened to the arguments and decided, on balance, this was the right decision for the three reasons I outlined. It has not been effective in reducing the number of people in emergency accommodation, which has increased every month the eviction ban has been in place. Second, it was beginning to create new forms of homelessness, such as people not being able to move back into their own homes after coming home from abroad and people not being able to put their own children - Deputy Cairns mentioned children - into an apartment they bought for that purpose, for example, when they become old enough to go to college. Crucially, we formed the view and opinion that by extending this, the chances of getting new supply into the market and new landlords to rent out properties and apartments would have been very low. There will always be a turnover of people entering and leaving the rental market. If we do not have new landlords coming in, we will never be able to get rents down and we will never have availability. It is our view and assessment that, if we are going to keep landlords in the market and, more importantly, get new landlords to come into the market, the only way to improve availability and get rents down is to get new landlords into the market, and by extending this moratorium, we would make the situation worse, with less availability, longer queues for people trying to get an apartment and higher rents. We see the differential now between existing tenancies, where rents are going up by about 3.5% a year, and new tenancies, where they are going up by 14% or 15% a year because there is a lack of new supply. Anything we do to discourage new supply is going to make things worse for renters. That is the basis behind our decision.

Deputy Cairns spoke passionately about how this impacts on children. I believe she is sincere in that, but if so, why is it the case that her party has consistently voted against Government solutions when it comes to affordable housing? The Social Democrats voted against the Affordable Housing Act 2021, which brought in the first home scheme for loads of young people who are now buying for the first time and brought in 50,000 new social houses in the next quarter, and that party voted against the Land Development Agency, LDA, which is doing exactly what Deputy Cairns advocates we should do, which is building affordable housing on State lands. Why would the Social Democrats vote against those measures? Why would its members complain about a problem and then consistently oppose the solutions?

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