Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On the Government's watch, not only are rents skyrocketing, in its report, the RTB is telling us that it has never seen such increases before and it has been recording this for 15 years. In the past year, rents have gone up by 12% while, at the same time, homeownership is falling. Do you know the average age of first-time buyers? It is 35 years. Why? It is because the Government's policies are failing them over and over again. How bad does it have to get before the Government recognises that it needs the type of intervention that Sinn Féin has been saying for years we need?

We need to ban rent increases. It is as simple as that, or is the Tánaiste satisfied that areas, such as my county and his county, are seeing double-digit rent increases year on year, that things are getting worse under Fianna Fáil and the Tánaiste and if he is still in government this time next year we will be standing here and saying how worse it is getting again? The Tánaiste keeps telling us we have turned a corner. For those renters, the corner they turned just got worse because a new renter in Dublin is forking out €2,300 more than he or she was this time last year. That is the consequences of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in government. I put it to the Tánaiste again. Will the Government ban rent increases to make sure that what we are seeing does not continue in the time ahead?

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