Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Ó Broin for bringing this motion to the floor of the House. It is important that we keep discussing and raising these issues with the Government. Renters are very much at the coalface of our housing crisis. The vast majority of those entering homelessness are renters. Focus Ireland found 70% of families becoming homeless came from the rental sector. The severe lack of rental properties, combined with little or no protections for renters against eviction, has created a situation where many often face insecure tenure with little to no hope of finding alternative accommodation if evicted.

Insecurity of tenure, a lack of other options, extortionate rents and poor housing conditions have left our rental market in a state of crisis. It is not fit-for-purpose, yet the Government has done little or nothing to protect renters. There have been no real interventions in terms of building public or cost-rental housing, strengthening security of tenure or tenants' rights or controlling skyrocketing rents. To add to this, the Government remove the no-fault eviction ban this year. Since then, thousands of people have faced notices to quit.

A recent report from the RTB showed that rents of new tenancies were an average of 18% higher than rents paid by existing tenants in the second quarter of 2023. This is just one example of how the Government has totally failed to control rising rents. Standardised average new rents rose by €3,816 since the Government took office. Is the average person making an extra €3,800 a year? Most people have seen their wages decline in real terms due to the inflation crisis, yet rents continue to go up.

The CSO found two thirds of HAP recipients are in employment. The reality for so many people in this country is that they cannot afford to keep up with the cost of rent. People cannot afford to rent or buy a house. There is no functioning public or social housing system to speak of. Even our emergency homeless services are overwhelmed and overstretched.

Threshold has stated there are 12,000 households in danger of homelessness. We know the vast majority will be renters, yet the Government is still refusing to reinstate the no-fault eviction ban. It chose to open the floodgates for notices to quit and evictions last April when it took away the only thing protecting many people from losing their homes. It is the norm across Europe for no-fault evictions to be banned as the bedrock of a stable rental market.

This Government, under the Housing for All policy, wants to grow our rental market as a percentage of overall housing stock. By failing to implement the legal norm for a country with a large rental market, it has built an unstable rental market and now wants to make it bigger. With regard to the growing rental market, I will refer to Part 5 tenancies, which will increase in a larger private rental market and the rise in Part 5 contributions to 20%. We have seen issues with segregation for Part 5 tenants again and again. In my constituency, there was a stark example of this in the Davitt complex, where council tenants were segregated into a single separate block with restricted access to shared amenities, including the car park, bike shed and communal areas. We have seen this problem repeated across Dublin. I raised the issue on Questions on Promised Legislation and was told the Government needed to learn lessons, but so far we have seen no lessons learned. We need Government intervention to make the pepper-potting of Part 5 tenancies mandatory in all private complexes and make sure they have access to communal facilities.

The Government has failed renters in the past and continues to fail them, with no sign of any real substantive change. There is a clear issue of not building enough public houses housing under successive Governments made up of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party and the Green Party but, more than that, renters have been cut adrift in terms of legal protections against extortionate rents, evictions and housing conditions.

If we are to have a growing and modern rental sector, we need a modern system of tenants' rights to bring security of tenure laws up to EU norms and a ban on no-fault evictions. We also need a first right of refusal, that is, the ability to remain in a tenancy if a property is sold, just like business properties, tighter laws on landlords in respect of housing conditions, tighter rent controls, proper enforcement of housing conditions and rent controls. There is currently no enforcement at all to protect renters. We need an RTB with funding to give it teeth to protect renters, go after dodgy landlords and inspect properties on a regular basis.

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