Brian Stanley: Urgent warning on rent rises and housing policy

Minister, the question with this Bill, as with previous ones, is that is it going to help low and middle income families, particularly low and middle income families, to access affordable and secure accommodation, and particularly in mind of those in private rented accommodation. And the concern here is that, you know, you're bringing in further measures on the back of the amendments that were brought in in March. And that is one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation in relation to tenants and renters in this country, because you threw them completely at the mercy of free market speculation. And that is a recipe for disaster. You know, just look across at America and look across other countries where unbridled free market here is the order of the day. I want to say to you that what I'm hearing from some parts of the country, and what I'm hearing from my own constituency in Leash, is that those changes have piled on. And I'm seeing it coming into the constituency office, you know, right since November, December of last year. And right through, right through up to yesterday, there's the effects of that, we're seeing it at local level, the effects of those changes. It's piling huge pressure on households renting and on individuals renting. And there's a case in the street where I live in, where more than half the income, sorry, in the street where I have my office, where more than half the income of the household is going on rent. That is not sustainable. You cannot do that. And that's the result of what's happening here in this legislation and previous legislation that you brought in. The notices to quit continue to spiral. Rents for new lettings between, and rents between new tenancies, they have just hit the roof and gone out through it. You know, Section 8 in particular, this bill, and I will be putting an amendment to it, you know, in relation to the cap, a cap needs to be re-imposed. We were, most of us were critical of the rent pressure zones. You know, we would like them to be stronger and there was, you know, there's ways out of it. But they did provide some cooling effect in the municipal districts where they applied. And the evidence of that is that when the Fianna Fáil Fianna Gael government removed them, and I'm saying this honestly here, you can see what happened. The evidence is there in the rent reports, DAF.ie, if you look at the Residential Tenancy Board figures, you know, everything shows, not just us telling you, the actual hard data to tell you this. You know, I told you about the increases in the case of Leash. In a two-bedroomed house or apartment in the space of one year, 34% is the average increase. That's the average increase in Cornwall, in the space of 12 months. Now, there's nothing else I know of that's gone up 34%. You know, that's like something that happened in some sort of Banana Republic. But that happened in County Leash. And there's nobody disputing it. It's there in the hard facts of data. The three-bedroom, you know, three-bedroom new lets, over 2,000. And what's happened is, it's the law of the jungle, and it's nothing less than that, is what's happened. It's Trumpian-style politics. And that's regrettable. That's regrettable here. You know, I recognise that some small landlords, maybe, are, you know, being fair enough about it, and have tried to, in a lot of cases, not being too penal about it. And on top of all that, then, in recent times, you have lowered the standards on sizes for apartments. The sizes of windows. The last time window sizes were reduced was under British Rule, because the rent was based on the amount of, one of the issues was the amount of space going into the little cabins that people lived in. And here we are now, you know, with 36-square-metre apartments, and we've limited the light going into them. So not only are we going to limit the space, we've limited the light. And then, and then the developers of building apartments, including those who had started, they've now, they've got a tax break. And to cap it all, then, you know, the third one, then, you bring in this measure on rent. So you have tenants competing against each other, competing for somewhere to live. And that's what's being pled. It's like, it's like an auction. And landlords are using that. Some, some landlords are using that. And all of this, the context, and the context is always important. And I'm raising this with you because, you know, I'm hearing this off constituents day in, day out. All of this is at a time when the cost of living is going up, and has gone up. There's no dispute in it. Energy, electricity, fuel, groceries, transport. And the coming winter is going to be very, very difficult. You know, we're in the month of June now, but, you know, renters and people who are struggling with mortgages, a lot of people who have mortgages are struggling, and struggling very badly at the moment. And what I want to say to you is this, is the message I want to bring here today, is the human cost. There's a human cost to all this. There's a human cost in terms of stress. There's a human cost in terms of mental health. There's a human cost in terms of conflict within families over it. Health is affected. Relationships are breaking down. And, of course, there's poverty. And you saw the figures earlier in the week in regards, in regard to child poverty. And that's not good enough in a state, one of the richest states in the world. And, you know, as always, I'm not arguing for willy-nilly measures here to be brought in. What I'm trying to get across to you is that the measures, the cumulative effect of the measures that you've taken over recent times is, you know, you have reduced standards, you have landlords, particularly big landlords and developers have benefited, and you have piled on, piled on further pressure onto people who are already struggling. And that's not good enough. We don't need to be doing this. There was another road to take with this. But the impact of these measures being imposed by the Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael government, and I'm asking you through this, is that this should be assessed. We should let it run to the, maybe to the six-month period. And the effect of this on people and on housing should be assessed at this stage, at that stage, you know, in September, October. This should be examined in the cold light of day, what's happening. And I'm urging the government to do that. You know, that you may have disputed what we were saying to you back in, back in January and February and March, what we were seeing, what we were seeing happening on the ground. Let's see the effects of this at a six-month point, maybe in October, and see what's happening. And I'm asking you to use this bill, you know, you brought in a pile of amendments, I would ask you to go back again and look at this, and to try and put some cooling effect on the rising and spiralling cost of private rented accommodation. This is going to do nothing, none of this is going to do anything for low and middle income households who are really, really under pressure. And we shouldn't be doing this to people. This is not fair. What's happened is not fair. And everybody here in this house, I think, if they look at the evidence, will recognise that that's not the type of society that we should be trying to live in. Of course, we need more housing. And this in itself, the measures you brought in will not provide more housing. To provide more hardship, that's what you're doing, and that's not good enough. Thank you.