Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

While the Government says today that the measures announced aim to improve the circumstances of renters, in reality it will make life more difficult for many renters across the country who are not covered by the provisions, such as renters who voluntarily leave tenancies, renters who are near the end of the six-year expiry date or will come to that in 2032, students and those who will rent new-build apartments. This announcement aims to do two competing things, neither of which it will achieve properly, namely, protect renters and incentivise private investors. Investors do need certainty and they have had anything but from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which have chopped and changed their housing policy at least eight times, particularly regarding the private rental market over the past decade. For nine years, we in Labour have called for the entire country to be made into a rent pressure zone, a measure we have long believed to be necessary as long as the system of regulating rents by these means remains. This is something both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have continually refused to do. They even went as far as describing the measure as unconstitutional back in 2017. This raises the question as to why the sudden volte-face. The only answer I can see is that the Government is scrambling and is fudging this as it goes along.

There is a poverty of ideas in this Government. It is too timid to implement a nationwide freeze on rents or, on the other hand, to remove rent controls entirely as the vulture funds have been lobbying it to do. Instead, it has cobbled together a halfway house that seeks to satisfy competing interests but in reality will satiate neither. There is a clear need to implement a better way of regulating rents and its own expert-led Housing Commission report, which the Government continually ignores when it suits it, has stated the need to do this.

A system of reference rents merits serious consideration and is something that we in the Labour Party proposed as far back as 2016 in our social and affordable housing Bill. I will seek to introduce legislation on this in the coming weeks. If the Government were serious about protecting renters without caveat, it would pass our renters' rights Bill, which includes measures such as a complete ban on no-fault evictions without exception and a register of rents so that tenants can have transparency on the rent that was previously paid on a property. Thousands of renters leave tenancies every year, particularly students, many of whom are packing up at the moment or have packed up by this time. They are already anxious thinking about where they are going to live next year. By allowing landlords to reset rents in between tenancies, the Government is throwing these people, and eventually all renters, under the bus.

I cannot understand why the Government is doing this as a stand-alone measure and not in conjunction with its new housing plan. The proposals as they stand will invariably lead to an increase in homelessness and they should be done in tandem with a successor plan to Housing for All. The proposal to cap the rent of new-build apartments at the rate of inflation creates more uncertainty for renters, given that inflation increased to 7.8% as recently as 2022, not to mention the added unpredictability posed by the Trump Administration and the proposed tariffs.

It is clear that we need more supply but this must come with the condition of affordability. We have some of the highest rents in Europe and it is very clear, with what the Government is proposing, that it is baking in upward-only rent increases. The Minister, Deputy Browne, spoke to the media today about a tranche of key decisions to come. To make such a fundamental change to the regulation of renting without, at the very least, doing it in tandem with the Government's new housing plan is reckless. Tweaking planning exemptions for attic conversions and granny flats does not make a suite of measures. The failure to include critical infrastructure, such as water infrastructure, in the Government's changes to planning exemptions represents a missed opportunity.

An announcement was made in recent days on public-private partnerships, PPPs. The PPP model was championed by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as recently as 2021. The Government's Housing for All plan recommitted to the PPP delivery model and despite misgivings, local authorities across the country were incentivised and did use PPP to deliver social homes. Last Wednesday, a bombshell was dropped on local authorities, with the Minister and the Government deciding to halt bundle 3 of the Dublin City Council-led PPP project, which has ramifications well beyond just Dublin. My Labour Party colleagues from right across the country have raised the very real possibility of hundreds of shovel-ready homes being stopped in their local communities. This is especially true for my Kildare South colleague, Deputy Mark Wall. In the midst of a deepening housing crisis and record levels of homelessness, this is shocking. If the Government is going to go down the PPP route, at the very least it should see the existing bundles through. In Dublin City Council, not only is bundle 3 up in the air, but subsequent bundles 4 and 5, which could deliver thousands more social homes, are now also facing an uncertain future.

Last year, before the election, the Government promised to oversee the building of 40,000 homes in 2024, only to miss that target by a whole third. Now it seems the Government is going to fail to meet its targets again this year. Indeed, the Government has never met its targets for social and affordable housing. I understand the concerns that people have about value for money - I have them myself - but where was this concern when PPP was introduced? The Government was warned about this. Local authorities and the Opposition warned the Government. Given that a lot of these projects are so close to having builders on site, it is unfathomable that with the stroke of a pen, the plug has been pulled.

What is going on in the Department? How will the hundreds of homes that are supposed to be delivered in PPP bundle 3 now be delivered? Can the Minister offer certainty over the future delivery of bundles 4 and 5? What action is the Government going to take to ensure that procurement processes that have concluded will not end up subject to lengthy legal battles because the Minister decided to do this out of the blue last week? Six housing projects are included in PPP bundle 3. The bundle 3 project board, which includes Dublin City Council, was informed by officials from the Department of housing last Wednesday that the Minister would not be sanctioning approval for the national social housing bundle 3 projects to proceed to contract award due to concerns with costs. These projects were scheduled to commence construction this month. The board was also told, even more worryingly, that future PPP bundles will also need to be reviewed. How does the Government intend to deliver bundle 3? Will bundle 4 and subsequent bundles be going ahead? If the Government is discontinuing the PPP schemes, that is understandable and fine but I do not understand why it is doing it mid-stream. It should see the bundles that are already in the pipeline through and then, if it feels the need to pull the plug, pull the plug.

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