Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment.

We have heard about the hundreds of thousands of people who are renting and vulnerable to rent increases that are completely out of sight. On Committee Stage we heard stories about many good landlords and there are good landlords. However, for every good landlord who did not increase rent or increased it by only a small amount, there are others who are increasing it by vast amounts because the average annual increase in rent - the factual figures do not lie - is almost 12%, which is absolutely out of line with increases in any other area of the economy. It is certainly out of line with the meagre increase in the minimum wage. We need some mechanism to put a brake on it. While the average increase is 11.7%, we know of areas where it is 15%. We have all heard the anecdotal evidence that it is as high as 19% and 20%, even though some choose to increase it incrementally by 1% or 2%.

There has been a vast increase in the numbers of landlords. On Committee Stage the Minister spoke about his fear that if the reasonable parameter we were proposing was implemented in the rental market, people might leave it. I do not believe that would be the case. Those who are serious about being landlords are able to manage a predictable and manageable increase such as the structured increase we have proposed. We still await the Minister's proposals. The more detailed and nuanced proposals from Threshold have provided a rental strategy for him in terms of predictable rent increases. In the interim people cannot be held hostage to out-of-sight rental increases, with no brake on the level of profit that might be sought. There is no mortgage on approximately 50% to 60% of houses being rented, which means that the rental income is straight profit for the landlords. Such figures are not reflected anywhere else in Europe. On Committee Stage we pointed out that larger-scale landlords had said they had never seen such increases anywhere. This is an emergency measure.

As the Minister has promised to address this issue in the rental strategy, we have not resubmitted all of our amendments; we have only resubmitted one amendment in this area. The amendment is very reasonable in that it does not seek to anticipate the outcome of the Minister's rental or tenancy strategy. Instead it proposes an interim emergency measure up to 31 December 2019, a date which has been designed to mirror the emergency measures the Minister has introduced in respect of planning. He has acknowledged the lack of supply and believes supply will not be adequate until December 2019, hence emergency measures must be taken in planning. While there is such a deficiency in supply, we should not see a huge imbalance, a dangerous distortion of the market in rent increases. Those who increased rents by 12% in the past year have taken three or four years' rent increases. Therefore, we are asking the Minister to introduce this measure which would ensure already high rents would not be increased by more than the rate of inflation for the next three years while he addressed the supply problem and introduced a more substantial, detailed rental strategy. We ask the Minister to accept this emergency measure. Even if he wishes to take a different and more nuanced approach in the long term to address the issue of rent predictability, we ask that he accept this as a necessary interim measure.