Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-12 ============================================================ Maria McCormack (SF), Labour Panel I am going to take some points from the opening statement and ask some questions. I am not going to waste my time trying to deflect from what we are actually here to discuss. When the Government side has to spend its time attacking Sinn Féin rather than explaining how this Bill is going to affect renters, it is saying all we need to say. The irony is striking. The Government side has plenty to say about Sinn Féin and nothing to say about the Bill. Sinn Féin has detailed alternatives that the Government has ignored. I do not need to deflect because I want to discuss the Bill. Plainly and simply, this new rent hike Bill is a financial attack on renters. The Minister talks about security of tenure. What good is it if the rents are going to be too high in the first place? There is nothing good that this is going to do for rent or renters in this country. Most tenancies, if the Minister is aware, only last three and a half years. This is the information that we know. We see cases of eviction coming in and out of our offices day after day at the moment. The Minister said this Bill was "finely balanced", but balanced where? It is absolutely top heavy. It is only looking after landlords and vulture funds. What about the regular renters? They cannot find a place to rent. The Minister said it was going to address how they "rent due to a lack of supply, as well as the issue of affordability." How in the name of the Lord is this going to sort out affordability when all it is going to do is bring up the price of rent? I actually think we are living on totally different planets here. This is going to raise rents for people in Laois. This is going to raise rents by €3,100 per year. What are these people supposed to do? They are coming into my clinics every single week and they are saying to me that they cannot afford the rent, and that is if they can even find a place to rent. What is the Bill going to do for them? There is nothing good that we can say here beyond it is okay, there will be a reset to market rent and it will not happen again for six years. For a rent who may only be paying €900 because they are in an historical rent agreement, does the Minister think any landlord is going to say they will not reset to market rent now that the Minister has just given them a free pass through legislation to put it right up to the market rate? It is absolutely throwing renters under the bus. Government Senators might listen to the real people on the ground rather than try to come in and slate Sinn Féin. Opposition party after Opposition party has told them where the problems are. They are in government. They are responsible for this. They are responsible for people sleeping on the streets and people in homeless hubs. How can we say that Fianna Fáil is doing everything it can to fix this homelessness crisis when every single month we see housing and homelessness figures increase? We have women and children who are in homeless hubs and cannot get out of them. This Bill is going to rents more. It is having an absolute laugh. It is another dizzying piece of legislation that will do nothing to fix a broken housing system. At the very heart of this legislation is the reset to market rent. As things stand, the current rule for setting rents is when someone moves out and another tenant moves in, the new rent is based on inflation or 2%, whichever is lower. The Bill will mean that from the beginning of the March, when a tenant moves out and another moves in, the landlord in most cases just resets the rent to the market rate at the start of that tenancy. I am just saying this loud and clear so that the Minister understands what he is doing to the rental market and families who are already suffering. They cannot buy a house. There is not enough social and affordable housing. Deputy Eoin Ó Broin has clearly stated the clear alternatives here, but the Government refuses to listen. It can back bite and back bite at Sinn Féin but it refuses to listen to the clear plans that we put forward. According to the Residential Tenancies Board, the average tenancy is three and half years. However, we are not listening to that part. We do not need to listen to the Residential Tenancies Board when we are in government. We just make our rules. A quarter of all tenancies registered annually are new first-time tenancies. What is going to happen to them? Market reset. If someone is a landlord or vulture fund, they can do what they want to me if I am a renter. We can conclude that, within a matter of months, up to 60,000 tenancies could be affected each year. Within four to six years, the majority of private renters will be captured by this reset to market rent. There are 507 households in Laois in receipt of the housing assistance payment, HAP. These are private rental properties, meaning that 37% of the social housing list in Laois is at the mercy of private landlords. We know that slow delivery of social and affordable housing has forced low-income households into being heavily reliant on the private rental market. If any those tenancies receive an eviction notice - more and more are, now that the landlords are seeing the great thing the Government is doing for them on 1 March - because no-fault eviction rules still allow small landlords to sell under certain circumstances, what then? The Simon Communities in Ireland have warned us that high and unaffordable rents are a direct driver of homelessness, yet when we are in government, we do not need to listen to the Simon Communities, and we do not need to worry about homeless figures. We can stand in here and clap one another on the back. There is nothing for the Government to clap itself on the back here. In this House and the Dáil, legislation is being rushed through without proper time for consideration. We have a real problem with this one here. This is how bad legislation and mistakes are made. Why are we having to deal with this Bill at all? The answer is quite simple. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Healy-Rae and Lowry Independents are on the side of big landlords, vulture funds and giant profit-making developers. There is no balance there. It is top heavy. Those profiteering from the housing crisis will be the only ones who will benefit here again, as they did with the tax breaks. It will be ordinary workers and families struggling to keep a roof over their heads who will be caught up with their earnings each month and will have to cough up more in line with silky pockets of pure greed. What is this Government doing standing with it here today? Is legislation going to freeze rents? No. We should be seeing budgets each year that will increase spending to accelerate building social and affordable homes. That is what this country needs. It does not need more money for landlords and developers. Sinn Féin will continue to oppose this rent hike Bill in the Seanad and the Dáil. I am absolutely disgusted. This is a really sad day - doomsday - coming on 1 March. The Minister should be hanging his head in shame. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-12/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:37+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-12