Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-12
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Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel

Once again, this Government is introducing a Bill that, quite frankly, it is trying to gaslight us with. The very idea that somehow introducing market rent is a good idea and will decrease rents or will in some way increase supply is absurd and insulting. The framing of the Bill from the Government is that it is about protecting renters in some way, yet every renter I have heard from is terrified about the consequences of this and what effect it is going to have on their lives in the coming months. The Government has framed it as technical reform to give security to rental tenancies, but its real-world impact will be anything but technical. It will be a path to homelessness and despair for many. It will be devastating. This Bill will push people from what is already a brutal rental market into one that appeases developers and big landlords. It is a market defined by extortionate rents, scarcity and fear. When housing policy creates fear, it is the most vulnerable people in our society who pay the price.
I wish to focus on those vulnerable groups today. This is the vulnerability of so many people that I do not believe that the Minister or the rest of the Government has considered when it comes to this legislation. I am particularly focusing on victims and survivors of domestic violence. For a woman experiencing violence at home, housing is not a policy issue. It is the difference between safety and danger. It is the difference between leaving and staying. For some women, it can quite literally be the difference between life and death. However, when the Government allows rents to spiral beyond reach, brings in market rents and weakens protections that may allow women to leave by exposing them to these rents, we create a cruel calculation for women experiencing abuse. Do they leave the homes they share with their abusers and face unaffordable rents at market rent prices? Do they face homelessness or do they go into the trauma of emergency accommodation? Do they stay and endure violence because at least there are roofs over their heads and the heads of their children?
That is not a choice anyone should be forced to make and yet the Minister's Bill makes that choice more likely for many women. With this Bill, landlords will be able to increase rents between tenancies and women experiencing domestic violence will have to leave at any given time and enter a new market.
The consequences of this Bill are staggering and cruel. It is deeply flawed and it shows how much the Minister has surrendered to the lobbying of landlords. The only thing the Minister has done is to allow already-record rents to spiral out of control. He will be aware that almost no rental properties fall within the HAP limit any more. The latest report indicates that no properties within HAP limits are available. Therefore, I appeal to the Minister to increase the ceiling for HAP since no properties currently are available that fall within it. It is absurd to be offering this to people as a solution to the crisis.
We know from Women's Aid, Safe Ireland and other front-line domestic violence services that housing insecurity is one of the biggest barriers to women leaving abusive relationships. They are staying in situations of danger because they have nowhere else to live. Perpetrators routinely use housing instability as a tool to coercively control the person they are abusing. Yet, instead of strengthening security of tenure and ring-fencing protections for those fleeing violence, this Bill exposes them to market rents that are simply beyond their reach. This is, therefore, not a gender neutral policy. It will have specific gendered consequences because housing insecurity deeply affects women who are living through domestic violence and those who have no independent income or low incomes. Finding somewhere to move to is already extremely difficult, but with the new market rents, the Bill will make it impossible.
Unfortunately, the consequences do not stop there. Carers, who are overwhelmingly women already balancing unpaid labour with insecure incomes and living in private rented accommodation will be forced to pay higher rents with fewer protections when their tenancies end or might be evicted because no-fault evictions have been allowed by the Government. Under the scheme, evictions are still possible for so-called small landlords. They can boot tenants out and raise rents to market prices. The Minister might say that will only be possible in a limited set of circumstances. However, rules can be bent and broken. We know that from looking at the number of landlords who have not registered tenancies with the RTB.
As Senator Clonan has already outlined at length, disabled people who live in private rented accommodation and rely on stability and proximity to services will face disruption and displacement. The average private rental tenancy is three and a half years, so the six-year window will not apply to anyone, including the most vulnerable in our society. In the coming months, we will see more disabled people being priced out of any accessible accommodation that is available.
I will make a light segue to note disabled people have not even been consulted on the national development plan. We talk about all the new buildings and rental accommodation we will be building. Have disability clauses been put in for procurement to address inclusion and disability? What is the minimum number of properties we are planning to build with disability metrics? That is a separate issue and I will bring it up at another stage.
Students, who move into new rental properties year after year - because that is the nature of student life - and who have no ability to absorb sudden rent hikes will be pushed further into precarity. Older people who believed they had some security in later life will find that security quietly eroded. The Simon Community report released in recent weeks challenges the assumption that older people are homeowners. Many older people now rely on the private market and the level of homelessness in this age group is growing. This is a vulnerable age group, made up of people who may have fixed incomes or are living on limited pensions. The new market rent system the Minister is introducing will only push levels of homelessness higher for older people.
Women experiencing violence will be hit incredibly hard. The State has committed repeatedly to the idea of a zero tolerance approach to domestic and gender-based violence. It is utterly meaningless, though, when we have legislation like this. I cannot see that this has taken any gendered lens by looking at the impact on domestic violence and women fleeing violence. Our commitment to zero tolerance cannot stop at criminal law or awareness campaigns. It has to be reflected in housing policy because a State that says people need to leave if they are unsafe, while simultaneously pricing women out of the rental market, is not offering protection. It is once again offering empty platitudes.
At the very least, this Bill should explicitly protect victims and survivors from displacement into unaffordable rental markets. It should strengthen and not weaken security of tenure. It should recognise that housing is a cornerstone of safety, not a commodity to be gambled with, but the Bill does none of these things. This legislation increases the risk for those living with violence. It is a terrifying prospect for any woman who is right now considering whether she will stay or leave. This approach will not work. The Minister needs to listen to those working in the front-line services for domestic, sexual and gender-based violence to ensure housing policy becomes part of the solution and not another barrier to safety because no woman should ever be forced to choose between violence and homelessness.

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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