Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-19 ============================================================ Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel I would like to ask the Minister a quick question. One of the Senators said we are all inconsistent on this side of the Chamber between what we say inside and outside here. I personally would like to know how I am inconsistent, because I actually think I am not inconsistent in my policies and values that are based in human rights, equality and social justice. I think I march to that beat and drum in here and in my personal life and in public life outside of the Chamber. I will comment on the reason for these amendments around review. Purely from a project management perspective, let us say, for example, we were subcontracting a project in the NGO and civil society sector. Let us say funding was being given and we were asking one of these organisations to do a project. I do not know if the Minister's Department actually funds Threshold, but just let us say it did. We would ask the organisation to produce a report on how that money has been spent and the successes of it, if it is working well and if the project is working well from a monitoring and evaluation perspective. These amendments are for just that purpose. They are seeking that we would gather evidence we can review and reflect on it. I appreciate that the Minister said that these things are always in motion and changes are always made. These amendments are very much facilitating that, as opposed to anything else. We heard the notion that the Government and Fianna Fáil are building and building and have always built, but the State is not building at scale. It is subcontracting building to private contractors and developers that are making quite a substantial profit off that. Linked to that, the State is then giving tax breaks to those developers, which led to €1 billion less being collected in the last budget. That was significant. It would also be great if we had a definition of what "State building" means. To me, that means the State actually doing it and not subcontracting it out to private developers for profit. Maybe that is an ideological difference we have or a difference of definition. If it is, then we are all debating in circles without really understanding what we are debating. The State is certainly creating the conditions for developers to build. The problem with that is that developers are making money off people being able to put a roof over their head. It is all very well to create those conditions, and I think this might be the Minister's argument: that we need the private sector to build because if it does not, then there will be no building. I actually trust the State, though. Maybe not the State run by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but in theory, I think a good, strong State can actually deliver and build. We have seen that historically in Ireland and I would love to get us back there again with things like a State construction company. Also on the premise that the State is building, the Government actually underdelivered in 2024 by almost 10,000 homes on its promise of State building. The reason the evidence and analysis on the impact of this Bill is so important is the aspect of affordability and the difference between the Minister's belief that supply will inevitably bring down rents and my belief that it will not because of what market-driven housing will actually mean. The market wants profit. That is the nature of capitalism. The market will seek profit. Affordability is so important when we are talking about what types of properties will be built. If we take the median salary of a teacher - and I know we are talking about rental tenancies here, but it is all part of the same holistic context - they can take out a mortgage currently of €180,000. We know no teacher by themselves is buying anything with that. Will they be able to find affordable rental properties? We have gone over this. I do not see how, and, critically, when, this Bill is going to help. At what point can renters be promised there will be a decrease in rents? --- 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