Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The skyrocketing rents in Irish society are causing very high levels of stress. Renters ask themselves: “Can I pay? If I miss a payment, will I be evicted?” The housing charity, Shelter UK, estimates that one third of renters lose sleep and one quarter of renters from time to time feel physically unwell because of housing worries, with the price of rent the top concern. That is in a society where people pay roughly 30% of their household income in rent. We live in a society where the average is more than 40%.

Skyrocketing rents are a cause of poverty. Renters ask: “What do I have to cut back in order to pay the landlord? Do I have to cut back on food for myself? Do I have to cut back on food for my child?” The deprivation rate among renters is now five times higher than it is among homeowners and the gap is growing. Back in 2018, the ratio was 3:1 so there has been a big increase within the space of just five years. When rent is included, 50% of single parents and their households are at risk of poverty.

Skyrocketing rents are causing young people to stay at home with their parents for far longer than most would wish. Ten years ago, the average age for leaving home was 19 whereas today it is 28, and people are being forced to stay at home with their parents into their 30s. That has to cramp the style of young people. I get the picture. Parents today are more liberal than they were back in my day, but it cannot be too good for the sex lives of young people to be forced to stay at home with their parents until they are 28 or into their 30s, and that is apart from anything else.

Skyrocketing rents are causing young people to emigrate. Back in the day, young people emigrated because they could not get a job here or maybe because there was a stifling atmosphere in society because of church domination. Today, young people are emigrating because of the housing issue, and the cost of rent is a huge part of that. They cannot afford to rent or if they can, they are pouring all of their money down the drain - it is dead money. The official statistics, in my view, have not yet captured the scale of this wave of youth emigration. The next set of figures from the Central Statistics Office will be very interesting to see and I think they will potentially be quite scary on that particular issue.

Bringing down the price of rent drastically is an urgent issue. It has gone way beyond the Government narrative of trying to slow it with 2% increases. It has gone way beyond even the idea of a simple freeze. What is needed are rent cuts of a dramatic character. This Bill would make it law that the maximum rent would be 25% of median domestic household income. That would apply immediately for new builds and new tenancies, while for existing tenancies that would have to be implemented within the space of one year, and there should be a national rent authority established to oversee the implementation of that project.

The official narrative is that landlords are keeping their heads barely above the water at the moment and they cannot afford to cut the rent. I do not buy it - I really do not. In Cork, the average rent is now more than €1,700 per month, which is more than €20,000 a year. Take out the tax, take out the maintenance, and there is a tidy profit there for the landlord. I do not think you can lose when you have rental income like that. That is before I even speak about Dublin, where landlords rake in more rent from their tenants than landlords in any other city in all of the European Union. I have heard Ministers say, “Yes, but Ireland does not pay the highest rates of rent in the world”, as though that is something to boast about. I will tell them where Ireland does top the league table, and that is on the percentage of disposable income, household income or net income that is spent on rent. That is higher than Portugal, higher than Switzerland, higher than Israel - top of the table.

Some 43% of landlords who have 20 or more tenants have a minimum gross income of €200,000 per annum. Ireland's biggest landlord, IRES REIT, made €22.9 million in profit in the first half of 2022, so do not tell me that this cannot be afforded and do not tell me that 25% is a crazy figure. The 25% is the figure we are putting forward. I think many tenants would say that is fair and it is close enough to the international landmark, which is that people should not pay more than 30%. However, if the Minister does not agree with a figure of 25%, he can tell me what his figure is. Is it 30%? Is it 35%? What is it? If all the Government does is attack the figure of 25%, then all it is doing is hiding behind the current situation, which is more than 40% of disposable income. By the way, for a large and increasing number of renters, it is way above that. Threshold now says that one renter in three is paying 50% or more of their disposable income, household income or net income in rent.

My final point is this. I read in the Irish Examinerthis morning that the Government is going to oppose this Bill because it thinks that landlords will cherry-pick and go for bigger households rather than smaller households, and that there would be a danger of overcrowding. That particular point might be taken up by some of my colleagues in the discussion in a detailed way. All I will say here is that the Government has some cheek to talk about overcrowding, when its failure to deal with the rental crisis is forcing two or three households to live together, and I am talking here about young people who are forced to stay at home with their parents way past an age when they should be flying the coop. Second, what about the stories we all hear every day of not two or three people sharing, but of four, five or six people and more, who are strangers, being forced to share accommodation in order to scrape together the rent and keep a roof over their heads? This Government has no right to lecture us on the issue of overcrowding and we will take that point up in the course of the debate.

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