Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to support this motion on behalf of the Labour Party. I am happy to see this issue being raised tonight. The housing crisis, as we know, is the civil rights issue of our times here in Ireland. I think there is agreement on that across the House. It was acknowledged by the Minister in his speech that we have a crisis which is challenging for anyone seeking to rent or buy right now due to the chronic housing shortage. We know that the social consequences of failed housing policies from Government are significant for people from all walks of life.

In the past, we saw a problematic overreliance on the private rented sector but when there was more supply of housing, it caused less of a crisis for many people. Now that there is such a shortage of houses to buy or indeed to rent, the private rental sector has become completely overwhelmed. I think the Minister acknowledged that. All the while, we see, across different demographics, people being forced to stay on in their childhood bedrooms, including young professionals and workers who would, in previous times, have been expected to be able to, at the very least, afford to rent a place of their own, if not to buy their own place. Now they simply cannot do so. I regularly meet constituents and the parents of constituents who are deeply concerned that they cannot even get into renting and will have to keep staying in their childhood bedrooms. Equally, I meet people who are a little older. Just last week, I spoke to a constituent approaching their fiftieth birthday, who is in long-term rental, with a decent, fair rent, but who is in absolute terror that at some point, they will be served with a notice to quit and will simply not be able to afford anywhere to rent, and have given up on ever being able to buy.

This is creating really serious issues for people. Parents who rent tell me that they are trying to contend with the stress of worrying that an eviction notice will uproot them and their children from the local area and the support network with local schools. The fear of being asked to leave itself has such a terrible effect on anxiety for so many, including parents and others. The knock-on consequences societally are immense.

Our social welfare and pension systems are predicated on the assumption that those who reach their mid-60s will have achieved mortgage-free home ownership. That is really the bedrock of our social protection and pension systems. We are all aware of that. That presumption simply no longer holds water. I have met people in my own constituency who are approaching their 60s and facing the prospect of homelessness because they are still renting and are simply concerned about not being able to continue to afford to do so once they retire. This is a really serious issue. There are pensioners who pay taxes and have contributed to the economy their whole lives on the basis that they will be supported in older age, but they cannot find anywhere to live if they face eviction. This is a really heartbreaking and shameful prospect.

There have been a number of different Opposition attempts to put forward constructive policies and proposals to Government on housing and rental. In Labour, we have consistently used our own Private Members' time to try to provide different pathways to addressing the crisis of housing. Most recently, in the Seanad, Labour Senators tabled a motion on tackling vacancy and dereliction to deliver homes to a greater extent. We tabled a Bill to implement the Kenny report to control the price of building on land. We tabled a Dáil motion calling on Government to use the winter eviction ban last year to ease the immense pressures on families in the private rental sector. Two years ago, we tabled a Bill to bring Irish renters' rights legislation into line with most other European countries and to provide greater security of tenure, in particular.

The Minister will also know that I wrote to him and to the chairperson of the housing committee, seeking time to debate our homeless families Bill, tabled by Labour to ensure that children would be prioritised in emergency accommodation settings. Our hope is that at some point, the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, and the Government will be prompted by all of these initiatives from us and other Opposition parties to realise that there is time to change and to engage constructively on these issues. The topic of renters' rights in particular is one on which we should see much more concerted action from Government.

This is an issue that concerns so many people. It is not a niche issue. I think all of us have rented at some point. In my own constituency, Dublin Bay South, almost half of households are in the private rental sector. It is the constituency with the highest proportion of private rental households in the country. The CSO tells us that more than 500,000 households rent. It is baffling that the Government has been so slow to tackle reform of this very challenged sector. We see such a sizeable proportion of the population affected and yet, just last week, the Residential Tenancies Board reported the single highest annual hike in new rents since its records began in 2007. It is extraordinary at a time when most of the country is in a rent pressure zone. We are seeing egregious breaching of the rent pressure zone rules through this massive hike in rents nationally. Looking at Dublin, renters are facing a 5.5% increase in rents, well above the purported 2% cap.

What are renters to do in this situation? Our current laws and frameworks require that the onus is on renters to seek to enforce rules. We need a much stronger public policy response because in a market of such chronic shortage, where renters are simply afraid to raise their heads above the parapet for fear of angering a landlord, it is simply not good enough. What we are seeing, therefore, is a system where the few rules to protect renters that are in place are routinely flouted. Instead of seeking to address this, the Government has provided one-off giveaways amounting to less than a month's rent, or providing tax breaks to landlords in the budget, and these measures are simply not dealing with the issue. We know more than 15,000 eviction notices were issued in the first nine months of 2023 and the RTB report demonstrates the immense pressure that all of those served with such notices will be under financially when they look to find a new home. Again, I speak about the stress and anxiety involved in this too. Therefore, the so-called no-fault eviction process needs to be addressed. We said, back in March, that lifting the temporary no-fault eviction ban was a catastrophic calculation. No effective contingency plans were in place. I am looking at the Government's countermotion and some of the measures are referenced as effective contingency plans. This is far from the truth. At the moment, I am dealing with one family who have been given a notice to quit and are seeking to operate the Government's own cost-rental tenant in situscheme. Their experience, which is replicated across the country, exposes the real problem, which is the real lack of effectiveness of any contingency plans. What we found is, even though the landlord in this case is very willing and, indeed, wants to sell to a family who have been renting the property, there is an enormous discrepancy between the market value of the house and the Housing Agency valuation. I am engaging on behalf of the family with the Housing Agency but I am finding that there is no way of addressing this glaring discrepancy of tens of thousands of euro between these two valuations. This exposes the real practical problems with this so-called silver-bullet scheme that was supposed to be introduced as one of the contingency measures to support renters in this sort of scenario. This family is in absolutely desperate straits. The landlord is also very distressed because this is a decent landlord who wants to do the right thing, yet the scheme is simply not working. In reality, far more effective measures need to be introduced by Government. We are calling on the Government to take on the renters rights Bill we put forward in this House two years ago, which the Government did not oppose on Second Stage. Indeed, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, made a speech that was rather supportive of its principles. The Bill would restrict no-fault evictions, create a rent register to ensure transparency around rates of rent, and it would introduce greater autonomy for renters, for example enabling rights like the right to rent an unfurnished home. These are simple basic rights in existence across European countries but we do not have them here.

We must provide greater protections for renters. We must ensure that effective rules are introduced, which are also enforced and effective, to address security of tenure, which is the critical issue for so many renters, regulation of rents. The reality is that renting is simply not working for people currently but many are unable to afford or have the option of buying and many are unable to find anywhere affordable to rent. That is why we are seeing so many in emergency homelessness. Others have spoken of the figures but they are extraordinarily shameful. Some 13,000 people are in homelessness and emergency accommodation. Renters are up against it on all fronts. It seems the Government is not prioritising protections for renters, yet they are a critical mass of people. Each individual renter deserves the sort of protections that are taken for granted in any other European country. Many of us will have family and friends who are renting in other European countries; I know I do. They are appalled at the lack of protections for renters here. It is regarded as so normal and so usual to have a security of tenure and to have a right to rent a home you can furnish and make into a home yourself. What we do not have in this country is that sort of protection. We have for far too long seen rental properties as investment opportunities and that has been the focus. We need to start seeing rental properties as homes.

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