Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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This week daft.iepublished its latest quarterly rent report. It confirms that the Minister, Deputy Coveney's rent pressure zones simply are not working. Average rents are up 13% across the State to approximately €1,131 per month. Rents in Louth are up an astonishing 18%. In Dublin city, Kilkenny and Laois, they are up 16%; in Longford, 15%; and in Donegal and Galway, 14%. In my own constituency, Dublin Mid-West, in Clondalkin and Lucan, new rents are now at €1,800 per month. That is a staggering €21,000 a year in rent. The situation outside the rent pressure zones is even worse. Thanks to the Minister's badly designed rental scheme, we now have a two-tier rental market.

My view is this is the Minister, Deputy Coveney's fault. He set his face against real rent certainty last year on four separate occasions. He opposed the Focus Ireland amendment to the Planning and Development Bill that would have kept renting families in their homes and rental properties in the market. He continues to push more and more families who should be in social housing into HAP, increasing demand on the private rental sector, and he continues to drag his heels on the urgent need to regulate Airbnb properties, despite Dublin having over 6,500 short-term lets but only 1,200 rental properties.

Light-touch regulation does not work. The time has come for Government to urgently review its failing rental market strategy and to put in place measures that will give landlords and tenants the security and stability they so desperately need.

While the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, will not be able to answer those questions today, I urge her to bring those thoughts back to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Minister of State, Deputy English, and impress on them the need for serious change to give struggling renters a real break.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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This week's daft.iereport highlights yet again the extreme problems in the private rental sector. It is a shark pool out there. County Laois experienced the second highest increase in rents in the past year. At 16.6% in the past 12 months, the average rent is now €769 per month.

The housing assistance payment - this has been the centrepiece of the Government's social housing policy - limit for a family of four, two adults and two children, is €610 per month and rents are €159 over the limit for HAP. In the case of south Kildare, in particular, Monasterevin, rent increases are at 13.8% and rents are on average €1,131, although the housing assistance payment, HAP, limit is €835 per month. If one is looking to get on HAP if one is in need of housing assistance, one cannot get on it because the limit is €300 below the level of rents. In the case of Laois, rents are €769 per month, which means they are €159 over what one is allowed in housing assistance. That is putting people under huge pressure. It is making people homeless. People who are in need of HAP cannot get it in either Laois or Monasterevin.

Workers on low pay who are not getting housing assistance are now finding themselves paying over half their wages in rent. I am coming across cases like that. Families are severely stressed. It is a situation similar to what is happening to those who are in mortgage distress. Their heads are fried with trying to meet high weekly rents. Over half their wages is going on rent alone. We have a huge problem here.

The Government's sham rent controls are not working for tenants but they are working for landlords. Will the Government ensure that the Department introduces proper, fair and sensible rent controls?

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I apologise to both Deputies on behalf of the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and I thank them for raising this important issue. There are acute pressures in the rental market. Those pressures are driven by a number of factors including rising demand as a result of the economic recovery, a lack of supply and the high costs that highly indebted landlords face in servicing their loans. Those pressures are borne out by the data published by daft.iethis week. Its report shows that rent asking prices rose nationwide by an average 13.4% in the year to March 2017. In Dublin rents increased by 13.9%, while rents outside Dublin increased by 12.7%. However, the report also shows that rent inflation has slowed over the last quarter. The rate of increase in Dublin rent prices between quarter 4 of 2016 and quarter 1 of 2017 was significantly slower than the rate of increase over the year.

The annual inflation figure of 13.9% implies an average quarterly inflation of 3.5%. However, the quarterly inflation registered in quarter 1 of 2017 was less than half of that - with south county Dublin at 0.7%, west county at 1.4%, north county at 1.6%, north city at 1.5%, city centre at 2.1% and south city at 1.4%. However, the increases are placing huge pressures on tenants, particularly those who are seeking new accommodation. There is no doubt that the problems in the rental sector are part of the very significant challenges in the housing sector. The problems caused by high rents reflect, and are reflected in, the other issues facing the housing market, namely, not enough homes for first-time buyers, increased demand for social housing and unacceptable levels of homelessness. While many factors contribute to the problems, the one factor common to all of them is the chronic lack of supply of new houses.

That is borne out by the daft.iefigures on supply which reports that there were fewer than 3,100 homes available to rent nationwide on 1 May, down from almost 4,000 just three months previously. With just over 1,000 of those in Dublin, this is the lowest figure recorded since the series began in 2006.

The best way to reduce and stabilise rents in the long term, and benefit the entire sector, is to increase supply and accelerate delivery of housing for the private and social rented sectors. Rebuilding Ireland, the Government's Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness, aims to increase and accelerate housing delivery across all tenures to help individuals and families meet their housing needs. Together with the strategy for the rental sector it sets out more than 100 actions the Government is taking through new policy, new legislation and innovative measures to achieve that aim. Supply measures include the use of publicly owned sites and the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government is engaging actively with local authorities in rent pressure zones to use publicly owned sites to kick-start supply. By way of example in this regard, Dublin City Council has brought forward a land initiative project covering three sites at O'Devaney Gardens, Oscar Traynor Road and St. Michael's Estate in Inchicore with which I am familiar, and is seeking partners to deliver a mix of social, affordable and private housing.

The Department is also supporting more build-to-rent development through pathfinder sites to help ensure a more supportive regulatory approach. In February, the Minister, Deputy Coveney, launched major infrastructure works on the Cherrywood site in Dublin costing €35 million, a first step towards the delivery of more than 1,300 new build-to-rent homes, which will start later this year.

The repair and lease scheme, under which local authorities will refurbish vacant properties and lease them from their owners, was rolled out nationwide in February, to bring vacant properties back into use. That will deliver 3,500 properties by 2021 at a cost of €150 million. Funding this year will cover getting 800 dwellings back into use for families on the social housing list.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, has been in office for a year and on every single indicator his plan is failing. Homelessness for adults, children and families is up 20% and homelessness has increased every month since he has taken office. We have seen continual increases in rent and in terms of supply the snail's pace of social housing delivery and private home delivery is there for all to see, despite the fact the Minister continues to put inaccurate figures into the public domain. He is targeting just 3% of the 183,000 vacant homes, which is only approximately 1,000 homes a year for every year of the plan. It is no wonder the Minister is hiding this week. He has not been in the House for Questions on Promised Legislation. He is not here for the Topical Issue debate. I have great sympathy for the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, who has been asked to stand here in his place. Clearly, she can only read out the statement she has been given. I am not surprised the Minister does not have the guts to come into this Chamber at any stage where he could be questioned by the Opposition this week because he knows his plan is failing and nothing in the note the Minister of State has given us today suggests otherwise.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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The reply from the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, does not give any comfort to people in Laois, Monasterevin or other parts of the country who have had sharp increases in rent. Rents in Laois have increased by 16.6%, the second highest increase in the State. In a reply to a recent parliamentary question the Minister, Deputy Coveney, said the increase has to be more than 7% in four of the previous six quarters. That is a huge increase. The Government's rent controls are clearly not working. Families are under severe stress. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, to ask the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Minister of State in the Department, Deputy English, to go back to the drawing board and introduce proper rent controls.

Sinn Féin introduced a proposal to link rents with the level of general inflation. That happens in other countries so why can we not do it here? We also called for an acceleration of the local authority house building programme and a reintroduction of the affordable housing scheme which the previous Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, abolished under the previous Government.

There is a commitment on page 23 of the programme for Government to introduce a cost rental option. There is unanimous support in the House for that. The Government included the measure in the programme for Government. That is a measure Sinn Féin could support if it was done properly. That would bring immediate relief for people. I ask the Minister of State to ensure the Minister reports on progress with the scheme.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Deputies are correct that I am giving a statement. However, I am very much aware myself of the difficulties people face in my constituency but there have been significant changes. I can only speak for the area I represent in Dublin South-Central where a significant number of properties have been bought up by the council and a significant amount of properties and voids have been put back into the system.

In the short term, the Government's rent predictability measures limit rent increases to a maximum of 4% per annum, less than one third ofthe rate of rent inflation reported by daft.ie. Tenants can expect to see significantly smaller rent increases than those they have seen recently or would have faced if the measures had not been introduced. As has already been indicated, Dublin was designated as a rent pressure zone in December 2016. The daft.iereport data for Dublin indicates that the rate of rent price increases has dropped since then. However, it is still too early to say whether that is an effect of the rent predictability measure. The Minister will be better placed to make a judgement when the RTB publishes the rent index report for quarter 1, 2017, next month.

The Minister, Deputy Coveney, has already committed to carrying out a review, in June this year, of the rent predictability provisions. At that point, the provisions will have been in place for six months and it will be possible to ascertain their effectiveness and whether any changes need to be made, for example, to the qualifying criteria or the designation process. In the meantime the Housing Agency will continue to monitor the rental market and may recommend further areas for designation as rent pressure zones. Where, following the procedures set out in the legislation, it is found that additional areas meet the criteria, they will be designated as rent pressure zones.

I have listened closely to what both Deputies said and I have made notes which I will pass on the Ministers in question. I hope there will be further information to provide to them in the coming days.