Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-27
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

First, I reject the spin the Deputy has put on the legislation the Cabinet approved today in respect of rent. Fundamentally, to summarise, what we are now looking at is national rent regulation and national rent control across the entire country.
That is an outcome of this Bill. There will be strengthened protection for renters through the introduction of tenancies of minimum duration. That has not happened before. There is an effective end to no-fault evictions. It includes the establishment of a rent price register, which brings much needed transparency, and arrangements to reset rent to market rate only every six years. That is part of a wider set of measures the Government announced over the past 12 months, which have laid the foundations for significant movement and progress on the housing front.
The Deputy forgot to say that the tenancies of the over 240,000 people who are currently renting will not be impacted in any way by this legislation. She just ignored that and spun it differently. She deliberately misled people by saying what she said, in terms of the spinning of it and so on. The measures are only for new tenancies that start from 1 March. That is very clear. In our view - Deputy Cairns may differ - this is the most significant improvement in rental protection in the history of the State. From now on, when tenants sign a lease, they can have far more confidence in terms of where they are living. They will be there for a minimum of six years. The restrictions are much more significant now than they would have been on landlords in terms of eviction.
I make the wider point that the Housing Commission recommended that we reform the rent pressure zones, RPZs. That was a very clear recommendation from the Housing Commission. Yes, we are balancing but there is very strong protective regulation here. We must also increase supply. I argue that what Deputy Cairns and her party have proposed for the past two or three years would dampen supply and disincentivise investment and would not have any significant impact in terms of reducing rent. That is inescapable in terms of the Deputy's idea of a rent freeze. It is all very popular but it would undermine the rental market very significantly and to such an extent that you would have a depression in supply. We want more supply and we need more supply, obviously. Already, the indications are quite positive in respect of both the budgetary measures on VAT and these particular reforms.
It is also interesting in terms of a fairer system. Dr. Michael Byrne from the school of social policy, social work and social justice in University College Dublin has made the point that what is being missed in the current discussion is that the new legislation is designed, once established, to reduce the level of notices of termination.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:01+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-27