Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-18 ============================================================ Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel -----increased over the year. You are picking people's pockets. People cannot afford the cost of living as it is and now they will be expected to pay significant sums, depending on where they live in the country. For me and the people whom I represent and meet every day, that is how Ireland works now. It is one law for the wealthy and one law for inner city communities. Irish Institutional Property has free access to Leinster House, but somebody living in Pearse House, Ringsend or Kevin Street does not have that access, connection and past with the Minister for housing, other Ministers, Deputies and Senators. That is a real concern. Rents are already too high. As I said, we are in the middle of a housing and cost-of-living crisis. People are struggling to meet their weekly and daily costs. The budget last November left people with disabilities in difficulty. Where will they get money to pay rent? They will be down €400 and have been left short again. Government policy should be focused on cutting and freezing rents, not allowing them to rise even further. As I said, Lorcan Sirr, who is not a Sinn Féin representative but, rather, an independent analyst who has studied housing and housing economics for many years, said the Government is now trying to tell people that it will reduce rents by allowing landlords to increase rents. I mentioned that earlier. That stuck with me. It is difficult to understand. Market rent means whatever rent the market is charging at a point in time. The average length of a private tenancy is three and a half years, according to the RTB. The RTB has its challenges. This is not directly related to the Bill, but public housing, including flat complexes, should be allowed to come under the auspices of the RTB because the neglect in the flats is absolutely shocking. People have nowhere to go but to the council, which will ignore them. Dublin City Council tenants and local authority tenants across the country should be allowed to go to the RTB to get some redress because local authorities do not respond to council tenants. They brush them off. Some 25% of all tenancies registered in 2025 were first-time tenancies. If these trends continue, within four to six years, the vast majority of private renters will be caught by the market reset rule. The Minister might address that. Young people do not want to live at home for the rest of their lives. They want to get out and rent until they can save and buy a house. The current housing system is so broken that that is not achievable unless they win the lotto or get an amazing job that pays huge sums of money. Young people do not want to live at home. Children in Sandymount are mainly living in homes owned by the well-off, but they do not want to live at home forever. Just because their parents have a nice large house does not mean their child can afford one. They have to go out and rent, but cannot do so because of the failure of the Government to address the housing crisis. I hope I am not boring Senator Flaherty. --- 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/2026-02-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-18