Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)

Climate change and our economy's addiction to fossil fuels represent one of the biggest cost-of-living threats to householders, families, small businesses and farms in Ireland and this Bill is a practical effort to address part of that issue. I thank Deputy Murphy for bringing it forward.

I will set out the scale of the issue we are facing. Across Ireland, up to 250,000 privately rented homes still fall well below a healthy and comfortable B energy rating. This means thousands of people - families, workers, older people, students - are living in homes that are cold, damp, mouldy and expensive to heat. They are paying for it twice. They pay in rents that are too high and in energy bills that are artificially inflated by the lack of insulation in those homes. This is not just a housing issue but a public health, climate and social justice issue. We know what cold and draughty homes do to the people who live in them and to society at large. They deepen energy poverty, worsen respiratory illnesses, drive up carbon emissions and drain families' incomes. More than half of private rentals are D-rated or worse. One in five, 20%, of people living in rental properties are in properties rated F or G, homes that bleed heat and breed mould. No one should have to choose between paying their rent or their energy bill. No child should grow up in a bedroom where mould is creeping down the wall.

Energy inefficiency is a form of inequality. The Government's refusal to act has left tenants subsidising their landlords and paying extortionate heating bills for homes that are impossible to heat. This is a perfect example of a split incentive at work. Tenants paying the bills, landlords avoiding the upgrades and Government looking the other way.

During oral questions in this Chamber a few weeks ago, I asked the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, to address the delay in progressing the minimum BER for rental properties and to give me a date when the roadmap would be achieved. He could not and now we understand why. Last week the Government published the shiny new housing plan and the commitment to introduce a minimum BER for rental properties has been entirely abandoned. Another climate measure that would help hard-pressed renters and another Government U-turn like so many this year. Instead, we get this incredibly vague statement undertaking to "examine policy measures to incentivise increased energy efficiency in the private rental market." As an objective, it could not be more non-committal if it tried. It is depressing to see such a clear commitment entirely jettisoned. It is particularly depressing when considering landlords are already quite well incentivised to retrofit their rental properties. They can avail of all the grants the rest of us have at our disposal, they can get low-cost loans and they can even deduct retrofit costs from their rental properties.

As Deputy Murphy said when he introduced the Bill, they have not taken the carrot so now there is a need for some element of a stick. The roadmap the previous Government committed to may have vanished but the problem has not. The ESRI's research confirms the scale of the challenge: 240,000 to 260,000 rental properties will need an upgrade.

The overall price tag is big, at €7 billion to €8 billion. Even if you looked at those most urgent ones, those homes with a BER category of E1 or below, retrofitting them will cost between €1.7 billion and €2.3 billion. That is a big challenge. A challenge of that scale demands leadership, clarity and a systematic plan. Instead, we have delay, drift and a vague commitment to examine policy measures, but we also have this Bill which is proposing something that France and the UK have already implemented successfully.

The Bill is not radical. It is reasonable, practical, overdue and, I would argue, absolutely essential. It tackles the root of energy poverty in the rental sector, it gives Ireland the same basic protection that renters already have, as I said, in France and in the UK, and it finally begins to make warm healthy homes a right rather than a privilege.

I am supporting this Bill because renters cannot wait for this Government to put their interests first. Climate targets will not wait for landlords to be adequately incentivised to do this off their own steam. The health issues caused or exacerbated by damp and mould are not going to wait for Government to take this seriously as an issue. Energy poverty will never be addressed so long as renters remain the most at risk of it yet the least empowered to do anything about it. With record high rents in this State, the absolute minimum renters should expect is a home that is warm, healthy and affordable to heat.

Delaying BER standards for rental properties is not only reckless, it is a false economy. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the Climate Change Advisory Council have made it clear. If we miss our emissions targets in the building sector, the cost to the taxpayers will be in billions. Kicking the can down the road will not make this cheaper, it will make life more difficult for renters. We have to recognise what the real-life consequence of this delay is. It means a parent putting their child to bed in a damp room, a worker watching the heat escape through their walls and a pensioner rationing warmth in the depths of winter. These are not abstract situations. These are people's lives. Shelving progressive climate measures yet again is not a pragmatic step, it is a regressive step. It is costly and deeply unjust.

We need a plan that lifts renters out of energy poverty, helps small landlords upgrade their properties, cuts emissions and protects basic public health, and uses climate funding for climate action. That is why, when we were in government, the Green Party created the climate and nature fund to tackle major challenges, including the retrofitting of private rental properties, and yet the Government raided this fund that was designed to tackle major systemic challenges such as the retrofitting of rental properties.

Friends of the Earth has called this Bill timely, necessary, and absolutely doable. With the Government having watered down its own ambition to tackle the issue of energy poverty in rental properties, this Bill is even more important. I would argue that this Bill gives the Government a way to deliver on commitments it has repeatedly made but which have now been abandoned. It gives it a chance to redeem itself for the delay and the indecision. If the Government does not take the opportunity offered by Deputy Murphy's Bill, the failure will be the Government's alone.

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