Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)

This legislation, extending rent pressure zones to the rest of the country, is something the Social Democrats have called for before. We will not be opposing it. As part of the wider legislative changes the Government is proposing, however, we are deeply concerned about significant aspects of it. It is quite a cruel move to give renters around the country who will have an RPZ for six or seven months and then rip it away from them. The Government needs to be challenged again. It is not being honest when it says that renters in existing tenancies are protected. What happens when their tenancies come to an end? What happens when their landlords decide to sell the properties in six years' time? They will face market rents and a rental system and housing market that will be even more unaffordable. What the Government has done and is about to do is giving a very clear signal to landlords to up the rent.

The Government has no understanding of the reality of the private rental sector. If it actually understood what it is to be a renter in this country today, there is no way it would have provided measures that allowed landlords multiple loopholes and ways in which they could evict tenants and raise the rents to market rates between tenancies, be that in six years' time or when the tenancies ended. What will happen from 1 March is that landlords will start putting pressure on renters about needing to increase their rents. What powers do the renters have to challenge that? They can go to the RTB, which then starts a process that might, at some point, impose fine on the landlords. The reality for renters, who are terrified and just want to stay in their homes, is that this legislation that is coming down the tracks will mean they will be more disempowered because what they are facing is a rental market where rents will be brought up to the market rate across the board in the coming years. They will live and are being forced to live in more stress and anxiety. The Government claims its policy will protect renters. The real protection that renters need is from the policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which view renters only as an income stream for investors.

If we look at the coming six years, the current 2% cap would mean that the rent would rise by 12%. What we will now see is the rent potentially rising by 40% to 50% over six years. The Government is justifying the increase in the rents as incentivising investor funds to build a supply of more expensive and unaffordable rental housing while rents will be allowed to rise in line with inflation. There will be no 2% cap. If inflation starts to rise to 3%, 4%, 5%, 10% or 20%, the rents will increase. This is not a recipe for solving the housing emergency; it is a one-way ticket to a permanent housing disaster, with our younger generation forced to be lifetime renters from institutional funds that have no cap on their rents and will be able to continuously increase rent and screw those young people of their lives, of their dreams and of their hopes of being able to buy homes of their own.

What kind of rental sector does the Government think it is creating? What is the best case scenario? Is it that renters suck up the poverty and homelessness and choose between rent and groceries for an undetermined number of years in the abstract hope that their rents will, at some point, get lower? The Government is taking a gamble, but it is gambling with renters' lives, betting on the likelihood that the free market and the investor funds will come through for renters. I do not like the odds and it is not a bet the Government should be making. Let us not call this "market rent" and keep legitimising it. Let us call it what the Government is actually proposing, namely, exploitation rents. It is back to the rack-rents of landlords that existed in this country many years ago. The Government is bowing to investors, lobbyists and landlords and giving them the green light to take whatever they can from renters.

The Government might not take it from me and might disagree with what I am saying, but I am sure it will listen to and have spoken to Mr. Mike Allen, head of advocacy for Focus Ireland. Speaking on RTÉ's "Six One" news, he said the steps being taken by the Government regarding rent were "incredibly complicated". He said "the increase in rent that's going to take place when landlords are allowed to reset to the market rent, that [rent] is going to be very substantial". Even with the protections from eviction, if the rent cannot be paid, the tenant will not be able to stay. The tenant will be evicted because the landlord will be able to do so.

The bigger question is how the State will keep up with the HAP payments to cover the higher rents. If the Government does not increase the HAP payments, how will renters in receipt of HAP keep pace with higher rents? As Mr. Allen said very accurately, "a solution which says 'we can deliver more housing, but the cost is that you won't be able to afford to live in it,' isn't a solution".

Dr. Michael Byrne, writing in today's Irish Examiner, which I am sure the Minister of State has read, raised a number of issues regarding the protections from eviction, including no-fault evictions, the Government is introducing. The Social Democrats have been calling for a ban on no-fault evictions for many years. It is deeply frustrating that so many people could have been prevented from being made homeless if the Government had implemented the no-fault eviction ban when we actually asked for it. Dr. Byrne wrote:

... it appears that landlords will still be able to evict within the six-year period if the property is required for ‘family use’.

This is a regrettable inclusion, as it undermines the objective of the policy by allowing for a form of eviction that the tenant can do nothing about and has no responsibility for.

Similarly, the hardship clauses for landlords could be wide open to exploitation by landlords. We know this because thousands of landlords already ignore the law. The Government is assuming that we have this rental system where landlords follow the law and the rules. They do not, and the Government knows this. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of landlords are currently not even registered with the Residential Tenancies Board. They evict renters in an illegal manner. They charge rents higher than allowed in rent pressure zones. What is the Government doing? I do not see anything in the Government's measures that addresses the fundamental problem that we still have a rental system where the rules and laws are not obeyed by landlords and are not enforced sufficiently by the Residential Tenancies Board. Dr. Byrne goes on to make the point that we will have a situation where "the economic incentives of landlords are not aligned with the Government’s stated policy of creating long-term, secure rental homes. Dr. Byrne also wrote:

... a landlord who has tenants in and out every six months will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Similarly, when letting properties, landlords are now incentivised to rent to likely short-term tenants ... rather than likely long-term ones ...

This issue was raised yesterday at the Raise the Roof protest outside Leinster House, where hundreds of people took part, highlighting the devastating impact of the housing crisis.

I was talking to nurses and teachers on that protest who highlighted that, when they must shift placement or job in their training and education, they face a new rent, market rent and tenancy. It is similar for students. In another example of the disrespect shown towards our younger generations, students and key workers, the Minister initially said students would be protected, but now they will not be protected in the open market. How is this a serious policy when Government will not even do what it says it will do? The key workers I mentioned were hearing that we needed GPs, but GPs have very short placements and must move around. The key public servants we need - the nurses, teachers and doctors - now face a situation where they will be forced to pay higher rents as they engage in their placements and in the early years of their work. It is no wonder we cannot get teachers for our schools and they are leaving in their thousands for Australia and other parts of the world.

What will happen to rents? The Government said that rents would fall at some point. I have asked a question but we have not heard the answer. When are rents going to fall? The Government completely misled the public in the election by claiming it had turned the corner on housing. The truth is it manipulated the figures and knew the claim that 40,000 homes would be built was just another failed housing target. Now, it is misleading the public again with the claim that existing renters will not face rent increases. Of course they will when the tenancy ends and they must find a new tenancy. Of course they will when they are evicted from their home, which landlords will still be able to do. Of course they will if they must move around the country for their jobs. They will face higher rents because the Housing Agency, which did the report that underlined the Government's decision, said clearly that average rents would rise. Will the Government be honest with the public and say that this measure will lead to higher rents? It will and there is no getting away from that. The Government should at least have the decency and honesty to accept that it is making renters pay for the investor funds to incentivise - the illogicality of it - their supply of rental housing.

When will the investor funds reduce rents? At what point will institutional investors that want to charge €4,000 per month for a three-bedroom apartment reduce rents? At what point will Greystar, Kennedy Wilson, IRES REIT and the other landlords reduce rents? It is delusional thinking. It is market logic that does not apply because the housing system is not a market like milk, cars or commodities. The housing system operates from the fundamental point that people need a home and will pay whatever they can to try to get one. The market fails over and over in housing. That is why we have regulation and need public housing and why relying on institutional investors to provide a key source of supply of housing is a wrong-headed measure.

There are clear alternatives to this. We have proposed the homes for Ireland State saving scheme, which could leverage some of the €160 billion in private bank accounts. This could funnel billions of euro into not-for-profit housing bodies and local authorities to directly deliver affordable homes to buy and rent. The Taoiseach says it will take years to set up. Of course it will take years if the Government keeps delaying it and does not actually do it. If Government started doing it today, we could get it moving relatively quickly. If we said to people that here was a scheme and, if they put their deposits into it, they would help solve the housing crisis, I guarantee that there would be billions of euro in those accounts within a year. People across this country would say "Yes" and that they wanted their deposits to help solve the housing crisis. It is disingenuous of the Taoiseach and this Government to say week after week that the Opposition comes with no solutions or alternatives. Here is a solution and alternative, yet we see no move at all on it.

Other steps, such as taxing vacant and derelict properties, are half measures by the Government and not serious.

I wish to raise the issue of social housing projects, almost 180 of which are in Ballymun and Whitehall in my constituency. Some 500 social homes were ready to be built, with 280 due to start on site in the coming weeks. These were social homes in areas of the country that needed them most, but at the last minute, the Minister for housing pulled the funding from these projects. Some 500 social homes were pulled overnight. How can a Government justify cutting funding for social housing in the middle of an emergency? It is down to a lack of understanding. My understanding is that the Minister pulled the funding because the Government said those homes were too expensive. Of course they were too expensive. They are public-private partnership homes that include in the price the overall life cost of maintaining the properties. They are more expensive than just building the home, but we do not come along at the very end when diggers are literally about to start digging sites and homes are starting to be built and say we are pulling it. What will happen is no homes will be built there for a year or longer, and the Government has not even come with an alternative. It is a shameful decision that needs to be reversed.

We should not be surprised when this is the same Government that gutted the tenant in situ scheme. Dublin City Council informed me, when I asked on behalf of constituents who were facing eviction into homelessness, that it would no longer be purchasing properties this year where the tenant was facing eviction because it did not have the funding from the Department of housing. This is truly criminal. I said at the Raise the Roof protest outside the Dáil yesterday that all we heard from the Government was this talk about how it wanted to remove barriers and blockages to housing when the biggest blockage to solving the housing disaster was actually this Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Lowry-backed Independent Government. They are the ones blocking schemes like the social housing projects due to start in Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Sligo and the tenant in situ scheme, which was preventing people from being made homeless. They are blocking ideas like the homes for Ireland State saving scheme, which could be putting billions of euro into delivering affordable homes, never mind using the budget surplus to directly fund local authorities, not-for-profit housing bodies and the Land Development Agency to immediately fast-track the projects they could be delivering.

Regarding this Bill, we are in favour of extending rent pressure zones across the country. We facilitated this in the housing committee yesterday and we will not oppose it being moved. On the basis of what is coming forward, though, we are clear that we will be opposing the legislation the Government is planning to bring in the coming months that will essentially make sacrificial lambs of renters in this country, particularly the younger generations. I do not know whether it is in the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael psyche but there is something of pulling up the ladder behind them in this. There is a mentality of protecting those who are there. It is like they would protect the property prices of the homeowners but whoever came after would be sacrificed because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael wanted a short-term political benefit. How is it acceptable to hand our younger generations over to the institutional funds, which will be able to charge whatever rent they want? Inflation is what the rent will be linked to. We will see the new market rents they will be able to raise rents to, given that these tenancies change every couple of years. When one looks at the percentage change since 2020 and Covid, market rents have increased by 43%. If one had applied the 2% cap, they would only have increased by 10%. That is what renters will be facing.

They will face multiple percentages of increases in their rent if they have to change their tenancy and move, or if they are trying to move out of their childhood bedroom where half a million people are stuck trying to find somewhere to rent. It is deeply disappointing that we have not seen the change in direction that is so badly needed. People will be out on the streets of Cork in their hundreds and thousands this weekend. They will be out again for the CATU demonstration on 5 July and there will be more protests, because people have had enough.

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