Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-05-14 ============================================================ Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow I am grateful to the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, directors for the publication of their update today. When any report is published, it is very important not just to just cherry-pick one figure in isolation and present it as the reality or, indeed, the totality of the analysis that has been carried out by the RTB because, of course, that is not the case at all. In fact, the report that was published a very short time ago shows that there was a 39% decrease in the number of termination notices issued in the month of March compared with the month of February. While the Deputy might be right and while he may wish to scoff, the reality also shows that there was a downward trend from February to March in terms of termination notices. That is also in the report, but perhaps it was overlooked. The report also shows that there are clear signs of continued resilience in the Irish rental sector. We see more tenancies and landlords in the market than we did at the same time last year. That is a statement of fact. There are more tenancies, more tenants, more landlords and more homes. In many ways, this also tallies with the information we have seen from a recent market report on daft.ie which showed a modest rebound in the availability of rental properties. We have seen 16,548 new tenancies registrations in the first three months of this year. We have also seen 246,477 registered private tenancies in quarter one of this year, an increase on last year. A total of 105,847 private landlords registered in the first quarter of this year compared to the same quarter last year. This report shows there are more tenants, tenancies, landlords and homes than there were this time last year. That is not to say that there is not a very significant housing challenge or that we are not still in the midst of a housing emergency, but it is to provide some fair and balanced analysis of the actual report that has just been published. The Deputy referred to protection for renters. He knows, because he voted against them, that we took measures in this House to strengthen the rights of tenants. He knows that there are people in his constituency in Donegal who are now covered by rent pressure zones who were not covered before this Government brought in that legislative measure. He knows that since 1 March last, there is a rent increase restriction in place nationwide on all tenancies and that rent increases are capped at the level of inflation to a maximum of 2% for existing tenancies. He also knows that we strengthened tenancy protections, improved security of tenure, introduced tenancies of minimum duration involving rolling six-year tenancies and effectively ended no-fault evictions by larger landlords. A point I would agree with the Deputy on is that it is about supply. We need to continue to build and provide more homes. We are doing just that. We have built 241,000 homes since 2016, 36,000 of them last year alone. The Deputy talked about first-time buyers and people having the right to buy their own home. More than 27,500 people bought their own home in 2025, which was the highest number since 2007. More than 500 first-time buyers buy a first home every single week. When it comes to helping people in need of social housing, we have added over 85,000 new homes to the active social housing stock since 2016. We are building more social housing, with an additional 55,600 new-build social homes since 2016. Alongside that, we continue to keep supports in place, including the help-to-buy scheme, which the Deputy would get rid of, and the first home scheme, which he would get rid of as well. We have serious issues when it comes to housing but we are now seeing more homes being built. We see more people being able to access tenancies. We are seeing more landlords in the market. We see encouraging figures when it comes to commencement of planning. We will continue to drive that agenda forward and get 300,000 homes delivered by the end of 2030. --- 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/dail/2026-05-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-14