Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-18
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Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel

I will make a criticism of the Bill. It is political criticism, and I ask the Minister State not to take it personally. I know the officials have put in a huge amount of hard work. Because the legislation is being rushed through the Dáil and Seanad, renters and the public are not being allowed to examine it and have a good long look at the ins and outs of it in any detail. This is being rushed through. It is the most profound change to the regulations of the private rental sector in a decade.
The centrepiece of the Bill is the market reset proposal. This allows landlords to reset the rent to the market rate between tenancies. At present, a landlord can only increase rent by 2% to account for inflation. This change has been made at the behest of the big institutional investors to increase their profits. The reality is that Irish Institutional Property, IIP, which, it is fair to say, represents the big companies, the vulture funds and the big developers, has brought this about. It has open access here, and I see its chairman, Pat Farrell, coming in and out. He has access to Leinster House. He and IIP have been pushing this proposal. It cannot be right that the head of one of these big institutional organisations has such open access to Government. Whether Ministers meet him, I do not know. However, it should be declared and should be made clear whether they do. What engagement has Mr. Farrell had with Ministers, backbench TDs and Senators? It is not healthy for society. Clearly, the Bill is something they want. They wanted this. As was said by Lorcan Sirr recently-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-18