Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Sinn Féin Senators for tabling the motion because renters are often overlooked in the debate on housing. They have come to the forefront now because they are paying sky-high rent while knowing every day that they are living in insecurity. Landlords can evict them if they sell up. Renters must wonder whether that eviction will then make them part of the 13,531 people who sleep rough on our streets. Living in such insecurity is financially, physically and emotionally exhausting. All kinds of people rent now and a growing number of people are older and retired and will no longer be able to afford private sector rent. It is no longer the case, like back in the 1980s, of renters who are students and young professionals living in bedsits; it is now families, single people and older people. Children are growing up in rental accommodation where they do not necessarily know whether they will have a stable home in years to come.

As far as I can see there are four big issues for renters, namely, affordability, availability, security and standards. Affordability is paramount. I welcome the introduction of cost rental but there is a mismatch in the cost-rental system at the moment. There are people who do not qualify for social housing because our social housing limits are too low in spite of being raised. People who meet the affordability criteria get access to housing assistance payment, HAP. We need to look at that because banks will stress test people's wages and they do not necessarily apply the rule that people have to meet one third affordability. That is causing an issue in the scheme and the Government should be willing to look at it because costs are going up.I acknowledge that construction costs are going up and that delivering housing is not a question of simply saying, "We will make it €300,000." There are other issues around that, and we really need to get to grips with the rising cost of construction.

Over the course of my time as a Member of this House, I have spoken about increasing the delivery of not only cost-rental but also social housing as the best way to reduce the pressure on private market rents. This is where Fine Gael, in particular, fundamentally has it wrong. It talks about landlords as servicing and solving a housing crisis, but the reality is that thousands of people in the private rental sector should not be in that sector. They should be in the social rented sector or the cost-rental sector. If you qualify for HAP, you should be in a social home. Maybe we have to look at a bit more flexibility around people at different stages of life being able to move through the social housing system. At the moment, it takes so long to get a social house that people tend to grab and hold on to what they have. The Government is failing to deliver social housing, and local authorities are at scale. We are not resourcing local authorities to CPO vacant land for public housing. We need to meaningfully expand the tenant in situscheme because that is something that has been working very well under this Government and under Housing for All.

I also worry about landlords leaving the market because it can be an issue. I was struck recently by the question of how to regulate the private rented sector in such a way that gives people security of tenure and longevity but does not undermine the flexibility that some elements in the private rented sector have. Mick Byrne in UCD has come up with a really interesting proposal. He proposes that there be two different types of landlords that are registered and that a casual landlord, so to speak, be allowed to register such that, over a period of five to ten years, they are able to rent out their house for two years - for example, if they are travelling abroad or want to rent out their house for any other reason. That is one sector that allows people to have some flexibility in the short-term rental sector. Then that allows us to make sure that the rest of the private rental sector has more longevity, people sign longer leases, and no-fault evictions are removed for people who are longer term in the private rental sector.

We are relying on the private rental sector to house people, and it has been a catastrophic failure of public policy over decades because the private sector is insecure. It is a one-size-fits-all, and tenants who need a home can be evicted on the whim of a landlord who wants to sell their second home. It is not how the rental sector works in other European countries, where no-fault evictions are banned and people have security of tenure. I commend the drafters of this motion for including the restoration of the no-fault eviction ban. What we want to see is a permanent reform of the long-term private rental sector to ban no-fault evictions and provide long-term security to renters, not just financial incentives, and bring our rental market into line with European standards. We need action on renters' rights.

This motion as well as Government commitments are a good step forward, but we need to engage with this and we need proposals that provide an affordable, secure housing model for renters in addition to cost-rental and social housing. We need to engage with other legislative proposals brought forward by Opposition parties over recent years, for example, the Labour Party's renters' rights Bill, which we introduced in 2021. It is probably not perfect at this stage, but if it goes through pre-legislative scrutiny, all political parties could rally around it as reflecting the basic principles. We are in agreement on the basic principles of what is in that Bill. I urge the Government to consider these motions that have been put down as well as Bills on student accommodation, short-term lets, vacancy and dereliction, but primarily security of tenure for renters to ensure we have a stable private rental system for the many families and older people now living in the private rental sector.