Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I raise this week's report by Daft.ie on the most recent increases in the price of rents. I will home in on Limerick where the average price of a one-bed apartment in Limerick city is now €999 a month. For a three-bedroom house it is €1,277, an increase of 8% in the year. The average cost of renting a single room in Limerick city centre is €464, an increase of 21% year on year. The average cost of a double room in the suburbs is €505, up 13% year on year, clearly driven by the outrageous shortage of accommodation around our colleges. Just 236 homes were available to rent in Munster on 1 November, the lowest ever in a series extending back to 2006. The pre-Covid average for 2019 was 750.

This marks the 36th consecutive quarter where rents are higher than a year ago, in other words, nine years of rent rises. The impact on people is truly horrendous. People are unable to pay their bills. There is a cost of living crisis, with people challenged each month. It is impossible for people to save for a home of their own. They just do not have any money because of these exorbitant increases in rents that have happened over ten years of Fine Gael governments. There is now another phenomenon where adult children are having live at home with parents because they cannot afford to rent their own homes.

I have to raise the subject of ideology because this decision to outsource large swathes of social housing to the private sector is ideological. We had further evidence of that this morning thanks to my colleague Deputy Ó Broin. The figures for the housing assistance payment and the rental accommodation scheme are truly shocking. Some €1.5 billion was spent on the housing assistance payment since 2017 and €260 million has been spent this year alone. That is a huge transfer of wealth from the State to private landlords. The most shocking figure of all is that one in three people now rent privately. They have outsourced social housing to the private sector. This does not happen by accident. This is not some natural phenomenon. It is because the Government failed to build houses for so long.

Now they tell us they are going to build houses but there are two issues. First, there is no ambition in the targets which are nowhere near what is necessary to address the scale of the crisis. Second is the most outrageous proposal in the most recent budget, which is that 2,600 homes next year will not be bought by local councils but instead the Government insists they will be leased from vulture funds which can then take the profits for the 25 years tax free. How does that make any sense? How does it make sense for local authorities to lease homes so that they own nothing after 25 years of payments rather than buying them? I have yet to hear any decent explanation from any Government Minister. People in Limerick are shocked to hear this is happening throughout the State, but there it was in the budget.

I am calling for another debate on housing because we have not received good answers and unfortunately all the statistics show us things are getting worse rather than better.