Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am proud to introduce this Bill on behalf of People Before Profit. The purpose of the Bill is to make it mandatory for private rented accommodation to achieve a minimum B2 building energy rating, BER, standard by the end of 2030. A phase-in period is allowed in the legislation in order landlords can incrementally upgrade their properties if they wish to a minimum D2 BER by the end of 2026 and a minimum C1 BER by the end of 2028. Limited exceptions are provided for BER-exempt properties. The Bill includes important provisions that prohibit retrofitting from being used as a ground to terminate tenancies or to increase rents. These would both be banned under the Bill to ensure that no tenant would be evicted or have their rent increased as a result of retrofitting. It is crucial to draw a line in the sand on this now in order to prevent renovictions being used by landlords to drive up rents as has happened in some other countries.

I thank the Irish Green Building Council for initially suggesting this idea and Friends of the Earth, who have been supportive and active on this issue and organised an eye-catching event in support of the Bill outside Leinster House earlier on what is an appropriately cold day, showing what the reality is for many renters in our country. I also thank Diana in my office for doing a lot of the work on the Bill. Friends of the Earth will be emailing TDs to ask them to support this Bill.

The reason this Private Member's Bill is necessary is because the Government has failed to implement its commitment in Housing for All to the effect that "A minimum BER for private rental property will be introduced, where feasible, from 2025." This failure is not some oversight on the part of the Government; it is part of a deliberate policy of reneging on and abandoning previous commitments in relation to the climate and the cost of living. Evidence for this is the fact that no revised version of that promise appears in the new housing plan.

Retrofitting is often, and correctly, portrayed as an environmental measure, but its most immediate impact is to dramatically improve people’s comfort, quality of life and health by making their homes warm and cosy. We are now into the first real cold snap of the winter. Hundreds of thousands of families across the country who are renting from private landlords are facing a bitter choice between paying a fortune to heat poorly insulated homes and cutting back on other essentials like food or suffering in the cold for months, wearing coats, hats and gloves indoors and going to bed early in order that they can get under the covers.

I looked back through my emails of what renters have sent me about this issue. I will give some examples of what ordinary people are going in winter in one of the richest countries in the world:

I am currently in rental property covered by homeless hap...I’ve got two small kids my first born is 2 and half and he suffers with asthma and bronchitis, my second born is 4 months and suffers with bronchitis too the property I’m living in is not suitable to be living in with two small kids there’s mold all in the bathroom in the sitting room and in my little boys room it’s also damp I've done everything you can think of to get rid of it and it keeps coming back there’s very poor ventilation and the house is so cold even if I have the heating on my gas bill is costing me a fortune. I am constantly back and forth in the doctors spending a fortune on antibiotics for myself and my two boys I’ve been in contact with the landlord I've tried everything but no one seems to be listening or wanting to help I’m at a loss at this point...being in this property and seeing my boys so sick is really putting a strain on my mental health and knowing nothing is being done is really exhausting.

Another tenants writes:

I moved in two years ago, and the letting agents/landlord, have been ignoring all the issues since then. I have had a revolving door of contractors through, (probably at least once a month, sometimes four or five) but nothing ever actually gets done. I have paid for my own report to be done, and there’s 33% moisture in the walls. I've been told that “the landlord has no money”; “the water gathering on the roof is normal”; “he has 30 properties that are in the same condition, we need to get to all of them first”. I find it a bit concerning that this seems to be an issue across his whole portfolio! ... I cannot keep up with the bills, as there constantly needs to be fans and heating running. Something has got to give. I can't go on living like this. It's all too much. I am embarrassed of my living conditions, even though they are not my fault. I cannot have visitors over. I feel very isolated, and this is not a home, it’s a shelter. This is in distinct contravention to my right to dignity.

A third renter states:

I’m currently renting from an inattentive landlord. There's a list of constant problems due to the dated property which I’m left fixing myself. My eldest suffers from asthma and is constantly sick from the worsening mould all over especially bedrooms. My mental health and anxiety is at an all time high due to living conditions

A fourth renter writes that she has been “recently diagnosed with sarcoidosis, a lung disease that can be aggravated by damp and mouldy environments.”

That is just the tip of the iceberg of the misery caused by living in poorly insulated homes with no minimum BER standards. Ireland has one of the highest rates of excess winter deaths in the European Union because people cannot afford to properly heat their homes. We know that children living in cold homes are more than twice as likely to suffer from respiratory problems like asthma.

The private rented sector is much worse for this than owner-occupied homes because landlords do not have to live in the conditions they expect tenants to put up with. Four in five rented dwellings have a BER below B. Around 45,000 have very low energy efficiency ratings of E, F or G. Another 24% have D ratings. It is even worse for HAP properties, which have the lowest energy ratings of all. Half of them have BER ratings of D, E, F or G. According to the CSO, more than one in five renters has had to go without heating. This compares with 6% of people who live in owner-occupied housing. It is due to a combination of the sky-high cost of rent, the low energy efficiency of rented properties and the fact that tenants on average are much poorer than homeowners and are forced to pay much more to heat their homes.

In the year 2025, it is simply unacceptable that landlords are charging people extortionate rents to live in substandard conditions dangerous to their health. It is even more outrageous that the State is standing over that by subsidising these slumlords through HAP. It is also unacceptable that this human misery comes at such a high environmental cost. It does not just affect tenants; it is driving up carbon emissions and overheating the only planet we all have to live on.

Retrofitting the private rented sector would benefit everyone.

The Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, Darragh O'Brien, is over in Brazil at COP30 as we speak. Yesterday, he told RTÉ "We are heading above that to 2.3 or 2.5 degrees. That would be disastrous and maybe irreversible." He said, "Ireland and other countries have shown how we can start to transition out of fossil fuels. We are doing it. But to set the roadmap for a fair, equitable and just transition while phasing out fossil usage is critical if we're to try to bridge that gap." If he means that, how does reneging on the Government's commitment to bring in a minimum BER standard for the private rented sector in 2025 fit into that roadmap? It does not. It is just rhetoric to cover over retreat from any commitment to our legally binding climate targets.

Every day that is wasted on this is a day longer of wastefully burning fossil fuels to heat draughty, poorly insulated homes. To avoid catastrophic global heating in our lifetime, we urgently need to phase out fossil fuels and switch to 100% renewable energy to power all of our energy needs, including heating, and we need to reduce our energy usage at the same time. Retrofitting is one of the few policy measures that ticks both of those boxes simultaneously. It is a no-brainer environmentally and a no-brainer from a just transition perspective. Renters collectively would save over €500 million a year on their energy bills if their homes were retrofitted to a B2 standard. According to the Government’s new national energy affordability task force, retrofitting saves each individual household between €750 and €1,120 a year. The only reason it is not happening is because tenants are the ones who would benefit and landlords are the ones who would have to pay.

An ESRI report earlier this year estimated it would cost between €7 billion and €8 billion to retrofit private rented properties to a B2 standard. This was portrayed as unaffordable for landlords by comparing small landlords' assets with retrofitting costs. It goes without saying that corporate landlords and big landlords with multiple properties and hundreds of thousands of euros a year rolling in in rents can easily afford to retrofit. What the ESRI report left out was any calculation of the grants and tax breaks already available to landlords for retrofitting. It was really an incredible exercise in propaganda that was seized on by landlord lobby groups to say they could never afford to retrofit, but if we look at the grants and tax breaks available, we find that the finance gap for landlords is far smaller than the headline figures. Landlords are entitled to the same retrofitting grants as owner-occupiers so they can get half the cost of a deep retrofit paid for by the State and 80% of the cost of attic and cavity wall insulation. On top of that, retrofitting expenses are tax deductible for landlords at the higher rate of tax up to a maximum of €10,000 each for two properties. According to the ESRI, the typical financing gap for small landlords of a €25,000 retrofit - their savings less the cost, excluding all the grants and tax breaks they are entitled to - is €14,000. Once we include all the grants and tax breaks, that gap is gone. If landlords do not want to use their savings to pay for retrofitting, low-cost loans are available and the interest on that is tax deductible too. Landlords also benefit financially from retrofitting because it permanently increases the value of their property. Yet despite all this, too many landlords just cannot be bothered to retrofit even though they have the resources to do it and even though it is in their long-term financial interest. That is because landlording is a passive unearned income stream. Landlords own an asset and count the cash that rolls in from it. They are not used to having to do anything to earn that income, so organising a retrofit seems onerous to many of them even if it means that their tenants will have warm homes and save a bunch of money and even it is the right thing to do from the point of view of our climate. I have no doubt that goes for many of the landlord TDs sitting in this Dáil. It would be interesting to know how many of them have retrofitted their properties, including the big landlord TDs and Ministers like Robert Troy, Seán Canney and Michael Healy-Rae. They negotiated the programme for Government and left any minimum BER standard out of it.

Retrofitting is something a lot of landlords will not do unless they are forced. That is what we need to do. That is what this Bill does by legislating for a minimum B2 standard by 2030, the same date by which we are legally bound to reduce our overall greenhouse gas emissions by 51%.

If a landlord still does not want to retrofit after all the grants and the tax breaks, he or she can sell the property with the tenant in situto someone who will. We think that should be the local authority, which can convert the property into public, social or affordable housing. This should go along with a mass programme of councils buying up HAP properties and retrofitting them. It would be transformative not only for the living standards of thousands of the lowest income families across the State but for reaching our legally binding climate targets. The State should properly fund councils to retrofit council housing stock rapidly, not at the snail's space that is currently taking place. It cannot be done in this Bill because it would cost the State money and we are not allowed to introduce Bills that would do that.

It is no use continuing to target retrofitting grants at better-off homeowners like the Government has done to date. Most of the worst insulated, leakiest and coldest homes are either in the private rented sector or are social housing. That is where the focus of retrofitting should be between now and 2030. It is where the maximum benefit is for quality of life, for health, for the climate and for people's pockets. I eagerly await hearing what the Government is going to do in terms of this Bill. I hope it will not oppose it but we will see.

See this speech in context