Rental Sector: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-27
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Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach

It does of course.
All Sinn Féin is doing is coming in here and throwing out the same old tired mantra. We have made the hard decisions, as we have had to do time and time again over the decades. We have made the intervention that the market said was correct, what the academics said was the correct thing to do and we have done it. We have not done it on the back of one of Eoin Ó Broin's books either. The review indicated the provision to reset rents between tenancies may see some rent inflation - we acknowledge that - but this is expected to moderate as new supply comes on stream.
New supply is coming on stream. There were a record 7,850 homes completed in quarter 1 of 2026, an increase of 33% on the previous year. The only way we will address the housing supply and rent crisis in this country is to build more houses. We are building those houses. We are building them with conviction and ramping up those numbers on a monthly basis. We are doing so because we have a Minister of housing at the helm who cares passionately about this. He recognises the challenges that young couples, elderly people and society generally are facing right across the country. He engaged with the industry, best practice and looked around the world and saw what was needed here. We made a seismic intervention in the rental market - a once-in-a-generation intervention that has reset and recalibrated this rental market. It is something Sinn Féin would never have done because they would be afraid there are no sound bites that can guide them through the hard decisions.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-27