Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The latest report on the private sector from the estate agency Savills warns that rents could rise by up to 25% in the next two years. Last week, during the debate on Sinn Féin's Rent Certainty Bill, we pressed the point that the situation in the sector was getting worse and that time was the crucial factor. The Bill would have helped thousands of families in Dublin and throughout the country who are worried out their minds about how they will meet the extortionate increases in rent. They do not have the money to keep a roof over their heads, which is why the homeless figures are increasing on a monthly basis, yet despite all of this, Fianna Fáil and its partners in government, Fine Gael, saw fit to kick the can down the road once again. On the same night that Fianna Fáil voted against providing rent certainty for tenants Deputy Barry Cowen complained that there was nothing in the budget for those in the private rental sector. Many of the problems identified in the report for those in social housing and tenants in the private rental sector were addressed in Sinn Féin's Bill. There are now 328,700 people reliant on the private rental sector for accommodation. The vacancy rate is only 1.45%. This is a staggering number of people who are the mercy of a system that clearly does not work for anybody. One of the suggestions made in the report is that the number of vacant units would need to increase by 300% in order to see rent stabilisation. That is obviously unobtainable in the short term and means that the only viable option is introducing rent certainty.

There is also the problem of people living in local authority housing that has fallen into disrepair. There are houses that have not been renovated for decades. I have been in many such homes and the wind blew through the gaps in windows. There was poor insulation, if any; electric wiring that could cause a fire at any time and no central heating system.That is aside from those homes affected by pyrite and the number of people over the next couple of years who will be made homeless because of this. On that basis I ask that the Minister come back into the House specifically to discuss the issue of rent certainty and what can be done about the extortionate rates of rent increases in Dublin and across the country.