Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to highlight a simple statement in the Sinn Féin motion, that is, "too many working people cannot access secure or affordable accommodation, and too many young people are forced to reside with parents and relatives". Is there anyone in this Chamber who disagrees with that? Apparently there is because Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party did not include it in their amendment to the motion. They could not live with it as part of their amendment.I find that quite extraordinary, particularly given the commentary we have heard this evening. That is the fact of the matter, however, and it is what the Government did with this amended motion. I believe we will be voting on it later. The Minister of State might address why he has withdrawn the statement that "too many working people cannot access secure or affordable accommodation, and too many young people are forced to reside with parents and relatives", when everyone in this Chamber knows it to be true.

Senator Cummins spoke about the real world. I have good news for him. We are not proposing to ban rents. It is not a bad idea but it is not what we are proposing as part of our motion. Perhaps the Senator could look at the motion before he comments. However, I will bring him into the real world of where I live in County Limerick. In my village, a couple with three children had their rent increased at Christmas from €1,200 to €1,400 for a three-bed house. That is a 16% rise. Rent pressure zones, where are you? When that family objected to the increase, the landlord made it clear that if the family did not like it they could be on their way once the pandemic protections ended and that he could have people looking at the house the following month without a problem.

That is the real world that people are facing. The real world in Limerick is €750 for a one-bedroom apartment and that is the cheapest property on Daft.ie today. That is the real world. My question for the Minister of State and my colleagues in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael is how do they expect working people to afford those rents? How can they possibly afford to pay those rents? Those rents, by the way, have gone up by 45% under the Government's watch since 2016. There is a word for that, and the word is "greed". Let us be absolutely clear about that point.

Senator Burke was right about the differential. While rents have increased overall between 2009 and 2019 by 63%, wages have not moved up at all and that is the problem. People who have had no increase in wages are having to pay exorbitantly increased rents, which have gone up by as much as 63% overall and 45% in Limerick over the past five years. People do not have the money. The family in Limerick that I spoke about has no prospect of saving money for a house of their own. The members of this working family have to go to the community welfare officer each month to try to get by. That is the reality. The reality also is that we must do something fundamentally different to change this process because free market solutions are not going to work. Surely the Government should have realised that by now.

That is why Sinn Féin is proposing in this motion that we reduce rents. There is a way to do that and that is via a tax rebate. When I came home in 1993 such a tax rebate was in place, so this is not a fairy tale. It is simple economics that works. A rent freeze can then be introduced to lock in those savings, and following on from that we can legislate for proper contracts of indefinite duration and to give decent protections to renters. Such protections are already in place across Europe but they have never been put in place under a conservative Government. I will finish on an optimistic note, which is that everyone can now see there is not a difference of the width of a cigarette paper between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on the issue of housing.