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

I want to return to the issue of renters' rights because today sees another damning report confirming the Government's failure in its basic duty to ensure all citizens and residents have a secure and affordable home. Today’s bad news comes from the latest report of the Residential Tenancies Board, and there is no explaining away the stark figures it presents. The report shows that renters are now being hit with rent hikes of more than double the legal caps in some rent pressure zones. Between quarter 3 of 2022 and quarter 3 of 2023, we see existing tenants suffering averages rises of 5.2% and new tenants seeing rental cost rises of more than five times the legal limits in rent pressure zones. In Dublin, my own constituency has a much higher than average proportion of households in rental so this is something that affects people across my constituency. Across Dublin as a whole, the average rent for new tenancies is now €2,113 per month, an increase of 10% year on year between quarter 3 of 2022 and the same quarter in 2023, and 18% more than the average rent for existing tenants in Dublin. Existing tenants pay, on average, €1,788 per month in Dublin, up 4.3% year on year. In Cork, the Minister's own area, new tenants now pay an average of €1,386 per month, an increase of 8.8% year on year, while existing tenants pay an average of €1,170 per month, an increase of 4.5%. Give that rent pressure zones cover so much of the country now, these figures show clearly that there is an issue with flagrant breaches of renting law. Rents should not increase in rent pressure zones by more than the legal cap and yet they are doing so.

A home is a basic right. The Government has a duty to ensure people are housed in secure and affordable housing, but these figures tell us the Government has failed in this duty. This failure is having devastating consequences. We are all well aware of this because we all hear from our own constituents about the serious effects of housing distress and the housing crisis. They are plunging people into poverty, harming their health and paralysing their ability to progress their careers or get on with their lives. So often people use words like "despair", "broken" and "frightened" to describe how high rents and a lack of housing security impact their lives. The Minister mentioned that Ireland is an outlier. We are an outlier in the lack of protections we give to renters and that is what is clear from the latest report from the RTB.When will these endless reports and the correspondence we get from so many people in housing distress cause a change in Government policy? When will the Government start building homes at the scale we need? I listened carefully to the Minister who said "We are likely ... to revise upwards the housing targets". We in the Labour Party, more than a year ago, called for a target of 50,000 new builds per year to be set. Where is that realistic target from the Government? The Government keeps threatening and promising but we do not see it. When will the Government pass the Labour Party's Residential Tenancies (Tenants’ Rights) Bill, a constructive solution we proposed more than a year ago that would provide meaningful protections for renters stuck in unaffordable, insecure housing and that would mean Ireland would no longer be an outlier when it comes to real protections for renters?

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