Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-19 ============================================================ James Browne (FF), Wexford I deal with that every single day of the week and if it is not housing, it is helping people to access their rights in healthcare and other areas as well. Everything I do, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents supporting the Government over here do every day, is to solve the housing crisis. How we solve it is not by freezing the existing crisis, but by increasing supply. That is the only way, namely, supply of more homes, including social homes, affordable homes, private homes for sale and for rent. When I think about renters, it is not just the people who are currently renting; it is people who are at home and who need somewhere to rent. That is why we are driving supply here and why I say these proposals are efficient. When this legislation passes, whatever anybody thinks about the resetting, in only a few years we will have gone from probably one of the most laissez-faire approaches towards tenants in the western world to one of its most protective regimes. Most of the amendments cited went to strengthen tenants' rights and that is what we are doing in this as well. Whatever anybody thinks about resetting, the security of tenure here and the removal of no-fault evictions for the majority of tenants after 1 March who take up new tenancies will give us one of the strongest regimes in protecting tenants. That is something I am very proud of. I will hold officials to account where they are not delivering. I make no apologies for that, and it was raised in here. The reality is there are many local authorities that are not putting their rent from social homes back into social housing. The money is being used for other purposes. It is something I am examining very closely. I do not think a local authority can say on one hand that it does not have the funding for social housing maintenance while at the same time it does not put all its social housing rent back into social housing. That is not an issue with every local authority but certainly is with several local authorities I am examining closely. Rent should be kept in for social housing. It was a mistake that was made in the past under tenant purchase schemes, not so much with the houses being sold but that the money was not put back into more social housing in particular. It was a serious problem in the past. For student accommodation and our purpose-built student accommodation, we have put in the additional restriction that it can only be reset every three years but I know there are always particular challenges for students in those areas. The Minister, Deputy Lawless, is working very hard in that area. I was in Laois only last week and I have to give credit to the officials there because they are an exemplar for every local authority across the country in how they are driving social homes and affordable homes. It also sees itself as a full housing authority and is facilitating the delivery of private homes also. There was never a suggestion that large-scale apartments were the solution for Laois. The solution for Laois is the kind of housing I have seen being driven by the local authority down there; social, affordable and private, with the social and affordable being backed by this Government, which is essential. I have just one comment for Senator Higgins. She referenced fire safety and standards being reduced and she should withdraw that comment. I do not know of any incident where fire safety standards have been reduced in recent years. I am not aware of any in that regard. We have changed specifications around apartments but nothing on fire safety. That is a very dangerous comment to put out there. --- 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