Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending and commend him on many of his efforts in this Bill, although the Bill itself is a poor attempt to fix the worsening crisis in the housing sector. My colleague, Senator Ó Clochartaigh, has welcomed some of the smaller provisions, such as access to Housing Finance Agency funds for third level institutions in order to construct purpose-built student accommodation. The focus of the Bill is on fixing the supply side of the problem. While positive, this is at best a medium-term solution to a problem that needs solutions now.

The rental sector is broken. The Bill provided the Government with an opportunity to introduce meaningful provisions to safeguard tenants' rights and to provide landlords and tenants with some certainty regarding rental prices. The weak amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 contained in Part 3 of the Bill do not go far enough and the Bill should have been amended to include rent certainty. We will table an amendment to that effect on Committee Stage next week.

The so-called Tyrrelstown amendment, a proposal to strengthen tenants' rights in developments of more than 20 units, is not helpful to the overwhelming majority of tenants whose landlords each own 19 or fewer properties. According to RTB figures, 65% of landlords own just one property each and just 10% have more than three properties. How many tenants will be protected under this amendment? Sinn Féin would like to see real tenant protection measures inserted into the Residential Tenancies Act and section 34 of that Act to be amended so as to remove sale as a justification for the termination of a tenancy in any case where the property is in the ownership of an institutional landlord or the landlord is a property professional.

Fine Gael's refusal to introduce rent certainty is disappointing. A few months ago, Fine Gael Seanadóirí voted down our Rent Certainty (No. 2) Bill 2016, which could have saved renters up to €2,000 per year. It could also have saved additional families needing emergency accommodation due to unaffordable rental costs. These are working families. On the Minister's watch, nearly 2,500 children will be in emergency accommodation this Christmas. A litany of reports by Savills and Daft.iehave shown that unsustainable rent increases are not confined to Dublin. The most recent Daft.ie report shows that average monthly rent is €1,077 and that the annual rate of rental inflation is 11.7%, which Daft.iestates is the highest recorded by it since its records began in 2002. Rents in Mayo have increased by 5.1% in a year and tenants who are struggling to afford these increases have little security of tenure. The Residential Tenancies Act must be amended to remove the sale of property, own use, use by a family member and change of use criteria for serving notices to quit.

There is a misconception that the rental crisis only applies to Dublin and other urban centres. However, it can be even more difficult for people in rural areas to move from locations of high rent than it is for people in cities. High rents and the fact that people often have no choice but to pay them can lead to a host of other problems. Fuel poverty and food poverty often come about due to money being diverted into ever spiralling rent and mortgage costs. The fact that rent certainty was voted down twice in the Oireachtas has added to the sense of hopelessness of those people who have been facing increases, in some cases for the past eight years.

The programme for Government commits to having up to 175,000 of the 200,000 new jobs outside Dublin. If people cannot afford to live in rural areas where these new jobs will be supplied, there will be no uptake and no subsequent regeneration. Rent certainty is needed for economic growth outside Dublin. Rural Members who voted against Sinn Féin's Bill know this, as do the people of rural Ireland. Rent certainty would have put a pause to rising rents. We will table an amendment to this effect. I hope that Fianna Fáil will support it.

Senator Ó Clochartaigh addressed some of our concerns regarding the planning elements of the Bill. Amending our planning laws to facilitate a few developments is not the best way to solve the problem. This amendment will only serve to remove local communities from the planning process further and will potentially undermine good planning policy.

We will submit amendments to the Bill next week on Committee Stage. We are not going out of our way to be awkward or to put a stop to the Minister's plans. However, the legislation could be strengthened considerably. Families do not just "find themselves homeless". They are made homeless through a failure of Government policy to protect them and a failure to recognise that a home is a basic human right.