Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House for the first time. It is an important recognition of the crisis facing renters that he is present. I will support the Bill but I want the Minister to listen very closely to what I have to say. We will support any Bill that protects renters. It is regrettable that only in unprecedented uncertainty are we seeing proper protections being introduced. I know many people in this city and beyond who are in rental accommodation and have felt uncertainty for very many years. This legislation is welcome but it does not go far enough. If we are all in agreement that renters need protection, especially now, why should we limit this protection to seven weeks? We need more than this and renters need more than this.

The Government's national framework for living with Covid-19 states we could be living with the virus well into 2021. I think that is a certainty. Why did we not seize the opportunity and draw up an all-encompassing Bill that actually protects renters and avoids this nonsense of going in and out of emergency periods, introduce a ban on evictions or support the proposal we have today that gives people certainty and peace of mind? The old way is out the window. It is not as though landlords will not have protections either. They will have protections in terms of antisocial behaviour or illegal activity and Part 4 is being paused. This is not just a one-way street.

If there were no Covid-19, there would still definitely be rental crisis. Rents continue to rise, albeit at a slower rate than previous years. The latest daft.ierent report, for the third quarter of this year, shows the average rent in the State is €1,412, while in Dublin the average rent is €2,030. This represents an annual increase of 1% and 0.2%, respectively, on the third quarter of 2019.

The Minister has spoken about his record. Only a few weeks ago, very regressive legislation, the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act 2020, was implemented. This legislation only adds to the problem. Threshold has confirmed that, as a result, it is now dealing with a significant increase in cases and queries regarding evictions, and we have seen illegal evictions in this city. Today, we have further legislation drawn up by hard-working officials that goes in the right direction but does not go far enough. For our part, Sinn Féin will keep calling for a freeze on and reduction in rents, a ban on evictions and latent defects in housing to be addressed. We continually push for more social and affordable housing. We want renters, many of whom spend half of their salary on an asset they will never own, to have security, dignity and freedom. This is achievable. If the Minister and his predecessors had agreed to many of our housing Bills in the past, this could have been done without him having to lift a finger. If the Covid-19 pandemic is the reasoning behind this emergency legislation, I must mention the Minister's rejection, and that of Fine Gael and the Green Party, of legislation last night that would have banned co-living. Co-living is the worst possible type of accommodation to live in under the threat of Covid-19. It is accepted we may live with this virus well into next year. There may well be co-living developments completed by then with people living in them. Has the Minister told NPHET or the HSE they can expect hundreds of people sharing kitchens and bathroom facilities next year? Has he looked at other major cities that have experimented with co-living?

The amendment I want to focus on primarily today, which Sinn Féin will put forward, is to extend the ban on evictions to six months, well beyond the January date when the current financial protections run out. On a side note, why is January a terrible month? Is it because we have eaten chocolate for all of Christmas? Is it because the weather is rubbish? No, it is because people have no money in their pockets. Does the Minister put himself in the shoes of renters when introducing these types of protections? We support the call from the Simon Community to introduce this amendment providing for a six-month ban on evictions. We are happy to see many other parties and groupings supporting it and perhaps the Green Party will explain to us how refusing to support a six-month ban on evictions fulfils its election promises of looking after renters.

In recent days, we have heard the HSE and the Government ask for understanding from the public as they sought to press the reset button on the contact tracing system. The Minister should know that Ireland is in dire need of a reset for the rental market. We see the six-month ban as primarily helping those people renting to give them certainty and relieve some of the worry and anxiety. The six-month period would also give plenty of time for us to consider how we can give certainty and respite to hard-pressed renters. One of our amendments seeks to include those people who rent rooms on an ad hocor informal basis. This has been mentioned by Senators Seery Kearney and Byrne. I hope the Minister will support amendment No. 1 given his statements today.

On a procedural note, this is the second time today that Senators had to submit amendments to Bills before the legislation was finished in the Dáil. That is completely unacceptable. I support the Bill but it does not go far enough and we will indicate this through amendments. We should address the crisis once and for all instead of periodically introducing holding legislation that always seems to aim to do the least amount possible.