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

Of all the kites being flown about the budget, tax breaks for landlords is the most outrageous. Never before have rents or homelessness been so high. Never before has the number of adults stuck living in their childhood bedrooms been so high. Home ownership rates are at their lowest level in more than 50 years and the Government's answer to this litany of catastrophe is tax breaks for landlords. According to the most recent Residential Tenancies Board, RTB rent index, the average rent around the country is now a record €1,550. In Dublin, rents are in the stratosphere. It now costs, on average, €2,100 per month to rent in Dublin. That is more than €25,000 per year. Does the Taoiseach know how much the gross annual minimum wage is? It is €22,916, more than €2,000 lower than rental costs in Dublin. Yet, we are being told that the problem in the rental sector is that landlords are not making enough money and that their passive income should be taxed at a lower rate than workers, who are paying exorbitant rents and cannot afford to buy their own homes.

What planet is the Taoiseach living on? Has he just completely given up on trying to resolve the housing disaster? Is this measure an acknowledgment that his Government has run out of ideas? There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that landlords are leaving the market because of their tax treatment. There is none. In fact, according to research by the RTB, 49% of landlords who left the market said nothing would have stopped them from leaving. They were leaving because house prices are at a record high and they wanted to get the maximum price for their investment.

The Government keeps on claiming that there is an exodus of landlords from the rental system. This narrative was fuelled by a fall in the number of tenancies registered with the RTB. However, the census tells a very different story. According to the census, there were 330,000 households in the private rental sector, an increase of 7% from 2016, and 54,000 more than the most recent figures from the RTB.

If the Taoiseach wants to do something about tax treatment in the rental sector, why does he not do something about the pittance being paid by vulture funds? We know that tax paid by Irish real estate funds, IREFs, collapsed from an effective rate of 17.9% in 2020 to just 5.9% in 2021 and yet nobody in government seems to know why. Given all of this, how can the Taoiseach possibly justify tax breaks for landlords?

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