Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-19 ============================================================ Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel The vast majority of those apartments will be in and around the urban centres, such as Dublin. I cannot imagine there will be too many apartments built in west Limerick or in Cavan. Most of that supply will be in Dublin. I think that is a fair comment. The difficulty with all those apartments in that 38.7% increase is that they are not affordable for ordinary people living on Pearse Street or in Ringsend, or even young families in Sandymount. They cannot afford to have their children rent those places. There will be from 3,500 to 3,800 homes built on the Irish Glass Bottle site, of which 350 will be social and 550 affordable, with the rest at market rates. In fact, it is questionable how affordable the affordable apartments on the Irish Glass Bottle site will be and whether ordinary working families will be able to afford them. Low- and middle-income families will certainly not be able to afford them. There was a two-bedroom apartment on the Shore Club, right next door to the Irish Glass Bottle site, on sale for almost €1 million, which is insane. A one-bedroom apartment was almost €700,000. Those apartments are not affordable to those on ordinary incomes or families living in places like Pearse Street, Ringsend and Kevin Street, in the south inner city and the north inner city. Many of those people made their homes in Ringsend and stayed in the inner city when it was not a popular choice. The area around the docklands was derelict for so long but it has become fashionable now. The local community are being told that they are not welcome, basically, and it is Government policy that is deciding that. It is pricing ordinary families out of the housing market. In Ringsend, Pearse Street and Kevin Street and right across inner city Dublin, they cannot afford to pay. I went to the Irish Glass Bottle site a few weeks ago and viewed a one-bedroom apartment. It was nothing to write home about. Pretty ordinary, I would say. It is obviously nice, new, bright and clean. There is a small indoor cinema that people can hire and bring their friends to and there is a gym for exercise. However, the reality is that the cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment there is €2,500 a month. My understanding is that it would require the salary of two Senators to afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment on the Irish Glass Bottle site, and Senator's salaries are not too shabby. The salary of one Senator would not be enough to rent a one-bedroom on the Irish Glass Bottle site. For me, that is insane. Families who have been living and working in the community for generations were on the front line during the Covid pandemic. They were servicing the hospitals and the food centres. They were doing front-line work and delivering services to ensure that everybody else was able to get on with life. Their incomes or those of their children are nowhere near enough. As a result, they are destined to live in overcrowded housing for decades. The 350 public social housing units that I hope Dublin City Council will get on the site will be a drop in the ocean. It will not have any significant impact for families living in Kevin Street, Ringsend and the inner city. What we need is affordability. It is all very well saying 38.7% of new apartments but the vast majority of them are not affordable, certainly not in this area and certainly not in the inner city. I see the flats just off Pearse Street in Markievicz House. There are families in Pearse House, which is the regeneration scheme the Government pulled and now sounds like it is trying to blame the council for doing it because it said the council should be responsible, and it is responsible and has been looking for solutions, but the council cannot do it on its own and the Government knows that. The council needs funding from the central Exchequer to regenerate Pearse House, and the Government is not willing to step up to the plate and ensure families in Pearse House, Markievicz House, Conway Court and Macken Villas have decent sized accommodation. They have been let down. Those families will be living in overcrowded conditions for generations more because, given the rent they are expected to pay, they cannot afford to rent so they will live at home because there is not the social housing. On middle incomes, they cannot afford to rent accommodation on the Irish Glass Bottle site, somewhere that was an intrinsic part of the maritime working class community that is Ringsend. That is being gentrified and this Government is pushing ahead with the gentrification of the inner city. Many young people cannot afford to even have a family because they cannot move out of home and cannot afford a one-bedroom flat or apartment. Where will they go? They will be stuck with their parents in increasingly overcrowded conditions. Many families are caught because they cannot get onto the Dublin City Council housing list due to their income as they are working. They are doing everything right and are important pillars and parts of the community. They are working as electricians, gardaí or whatever and they cannot get on the housing list and cannot afford to rent in this community. Gardaí and teachers cannot afford to move into the Irish Glass Bottle site. We will not see teachers living in a one-bedroom apartment in the Irish Glass Bottle site because they cannot afford the prices. When the Government is slapping itself on the back and telling us there is a great increase in the number of apartments, that is all very well if you are part of the top tier of Irish society. That is the way it seems to be. You are either in the top tier and the Government will back you - the Government will support Irish institutional property companies and investment funds - or you are just stuck in Pearse House expected to put up with whatever the Government thinks you deserve. The Government does not think the residents in Pearse House, Markievicz House, Beech Hill and Rathmines Avenue deserve very much because the conditions they are expected to live in are absolutely horrendous. It should be noted that at the Kevin Street site, there are plans to vacate the Civic Offices and then build on----- --- 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/2026-02-19/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:39+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-02-19