Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

We have had more than a decade of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael presiding over a housing emergency and now the Government proposes to force ripped-off renters to carry the can for its failures. The Government's plan for the private rental sector is really Fianna Fáil's rent hike Bill. It can spoof all it wants; the only certainty from this move is rent will increase for every renter. It is only a question of when.

The average length of a tenancy is three and half years and many are much shorter, so the impact of this plan will be felt very quickly. All renters will be subject to large hikes over time. Those moving into new build properties will be hit with massive market rent from day one, while those who move frequently for work or education and regularly enter new tenancies will be absolutely hammered. We are talking about construction workers, healthcare workers in training and students who already struggle to find affordable accommodation being fleeced over and over.

Fianna Fáil's rent hike Bill is a bonanza for the big property funds, the vultures and corporate landlords. It is a blueprint to boost the profit of the big boys and screw over renters. That is the Government's plan. It is doing this during a persistent cost-of-living crisis where people are being hit with price hikes right across the board. In the past four years, the cost of the weekly shop has sky-rocketed by €3,000 per year for many families and renters are forking out an additional €7,000 a year on average in rent.

Where does the Taoiseach think people get the money? Everything within the Government's back-of-an-envelope plan is a jumble of contradictions. It is the product of a panicked Government at sixes and sevens, desperately seeking to defend a plan which more resembles a last throw of the dice gamble than an actual solution. It has been blunder after blunder.

The Government had to change the press statement announcing the plan because it made such a mess of things. The Taoiseach said one thing, the Minister said another things and the left hand did not know what the right hand was doing. Nowhere in the announcement on Tuesday, or in the days that followed, was there any mention of Government immediately bringing forward legislation to extend rent pressure zones, RPZs, to the entire State. The Government was content to wait until March and expose renters to big hikes. By Thursday, lo and behold, the Government had changed its story and it was adamant that it was always its intention to bring forward that legislation. Taoiseach, pull the other one. The Government is only being done now because it was called out on it.

Such is the mess now that we have Government TDs briefing against the housing Minister for, in their words, producing a plan that he cannot explain and that they cannot understand. I am happy to explain it to them. This is Fianna Fáil's plan to hike up rents; that is it. That is the bottom line. Cintíonn Bille Fhianna Fáil chun cíos a ardú go rachaidh an cíos in airde do gach cíosaí. Níl orainn ach fanacht. Ní feidir leanúint le seo.

The only way to undo the damage is to go back to the drawing board. By all means, extend RPZs to the rest of the State and to areas that should have never been left out in the first place. However, the Government has to drop the rest of the Fianna Fáil rent hike Bill. It is a crazy plan and renters simply cannot take any more.

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