Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We need to increase the supply of affordable homes to rent and buy.

For many years, Sinn Féin has also called for the introduction of a refundable tax credit to put one month's rent back into renters' pockets and for this to be introduced, crucially, alongside a three-year ban on rent increases. For years, this proposal was criticised time and again by the Government and by these Ministers. Last year, the Government performed an embarrassing U-turn and introduced a botched tax credit which more than half of renters have not even received. Even in rent pressure zones, rents are increasing more than the increase in the tax credit. The Ministers know this. If someone lives outside of a rent pressure zone, then God help them because the rents are increasing by multiples of that. Without a ban on rent increases, the Minister for Finance may as well have written the cheque himself and stuffed it into the pockets of the landlords because that is where it is going to end up. It is a direct transfer of money into the pockets of landlords. They are not my words; they are the words of the Minister sitting next to him. They are the words of Deputy Donohoe last year. The Government simply does not get it. If it does not ban rent increases, then what it is doing is transferring this money from the State into the pockets of landlords.

Not content with writing one cheque for landlords, the Government has decided to write them another one by giving them a tax break of €600 next year, at a cost of €160 million. The Minister for Finance has gone even further than that. He will increase this tax break for landlords year after year until it reaches €1,000 by 2027. How much is that going to cost? It will be €270 million to landlords. He is shaking his head but the tax paper he published shows the full-year cost of this to be €160 million. He may be embarrassed that that is what he is doing but let us call it what it is.

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