Peter Cleere (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)

This Government is protecting renters. Not only are we protecting renters, we are moving as quickly as possible on this. In line with last week's Government approval for the urgent drafting of legislation to extend and expand the operation of the RPZs, I welcome the publication of the necessary legislation, the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Bill, for urgent enactment today. The reality is that if we did nothing, the rent pressure zones as they stand would have fallen at the end of this year. That is a fact. It is essential that we provide all who rent with absolute certainty and also provide certainty to those who want to invest in home and apartment building.

While I acknowledge that the rental measures announced recently have been necessarily complex to respond to different situations in our rental market, the key message here is simple. The Government wants to provide certainty, clarity and stability for the rental sector, including for those who rent and those who let their properties. It is therefore essential, as an interim measure, for all tenants to be protected as soon as possible under the current rent increase restrictions that apply to RPZs. This Bill will provide that necessary protection for all tenants until 28 February 2026, but to be absolutely clear, for the almost 200,000 people who are renting in a tenancy that is part of an RPZ right now, absolutely nothing will change. Their rents cannot be reset after six years if they remain in their tenancies. They remain in a rent pressure zone. The bottom line is that, as a result of these reforms, renters will have much stronger protections than ever before. All renters across the country will now be covered by RPZs, including in my constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny, which I am delighted about.

The only way we can deal with the housing crisis is to dramatically increase supply. I think everyone is in agreement about that. However, we have increased it from 2020 onwards to about 30,000 units per year. Until then, we had 20,000 units per year. We have to get to 50,000 units per year. We need public investment, which we are providing as the State is the largest investor in the housing market at the moment. Almost €7 billion will be invested in 2025 alone, but we need more. It is envisioned that €20 billion will be required to get to the necessary targets. It cannot be done alone. We need substantial private sector investment as well. We are in a crisis we need to deal with as a society, but it cannot be done with State investment alone. We need the private sector to play its part as well and it needs to be helped and supported to do so.

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