Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)

In the changes announced today, there is an air of desperation on the part of the Minister of State and the Government to try to drive up housing supply. By lifting the cap on rents in order to attract institutional funding, the Government is effectively condemning workers and families, in Dublin in particular, to a lifetime of astronomical rents when there are fewer and fewer options to buy. Young workers, those new to the city and those evicted will not stand a chance. It is about pulling up the ladder from those who are trying to find rental accommodation. There will be some protections for those in rental accommodation, but only up to six years. Rents are already impossibly high in this city, at over €2,000 and growing at just short of 5% this year. Often, the rent pressure zone cap is breached because people are having to accept rents increased above the 2%, faced with no alternative.

I want to understand from the Minister of State what he thinks the impact of these changes will be. Apartments are the future of living in Dublin. The Government has made clear to people that it does not believe homeownership of apartments will ever be a possibility. We saw that a number of years ago with the bulk-purchase regulations that were brought in only for houses and not for apartments because, as we were told at that time, we had to leave bulk-purchase for apartments to attract institutional investors. It did not work then. I am not clear as to how raising rents will provide an absolute guarantee that we will see a big rush of money into the State, given that these funds will often be looking for a guaranteed rent. This is the critical point here. About 5,000 evictions have been notified at the start of this year and about €500 million has been spent on HAP. With higher rents, how are people going to pay these higher rents the Government is now accepting that people should pay. It will put them into the hands of social housing waiting lists and HAP and increase that State bill all the more. I do not see any fiscal prudence in all this.

I have one question. If there is a downturn, can rents fall as well as rise? That is the premise of linking them to the CPI. We must remember that in 2008, when prices began to fall, it took ten years for consumer prices to get back up to their 2008 levels. Are we going to see some sneaky introduction of an upward-only rent provision in the regulations or the legislation when rents are increased? We all remember that from the recession. It seems institutional investors will be demanding that in the regulations. We need clarity from the Government as to how exactly that CPI measure will be introduced.

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