Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-11
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Eoin Ó Broin (SF), Dublin Mid-West

I will speak in support of this group of amendments, amendments Nos. 2, 7 and 8. I will explain the detailed reasons for that in a moment.
I will start, however, with two small pieces of housekeeping. First, I acknowledge the very helpful role of the departmental officials. They have obviously been working on this Bill in a relatively short period of time and at any stage when either we or our committee sought additional information they have been very obliging in making sure we were facilitated in trying to understand the legislation. I wish to make clear that the criticisms I am going to make of this legislation are political criticisms directed at the Minister and the Government and not at the hard-working officials who are often put in very difficult positions producing complex legislation in short periods of time.
This is a truly appalling way to make legislation. One can always tell when a government is embarrassed by its own proposals. One can always tell when a government is anxious that the public who are affected by its legislation get as little opportunity as possible to hear about those changes until it is too late by government rushing through legislation in impossibly short periods of time. The Bill before us is not simple. It is not straightforward, as we will discuss throughout the evening, and it is going to profoundly impact the lives of tens of thousands of people. Yet, we are being given an entirely inadequate Committee Stage opportunity. In effect, there will be no Report and Final Stages. The Government is going to make the most substantial change to the regulation of the private rental sector in over a decade in the space of ten hours when includes the time spent on the Bill last week and this week and whatever time it will get in the Seanad next week. Of course, the problem with that is not only is there a lack of scrutiny and a lack of media and public attention, it also means that whatever the Government's intentions, the negative consequences of the legislation are probably going to be even worse. Again, there are some specific instances in which I will raise that. I put on record my strong objection to how the Minister has proceeded with this. If this becomes the way in which he does his business, it will make the job of those of us on the Oireachtas housing committee who take our jobs as legislators seriously much more difficult.
Specifically, with respect to the amendments requiring the Minister to bring forward a number of reports, there is a continuity between the three amendments because they all call for reports related to affordability of rents now but also affordability as a consequence of the changes the Government is making. I have tabled a number of amendments that are similar to amendment No. 1 in particular, to which Deputy Boyd Barrett referred earlier, to try to delay the passage of the Bill until such reports were produced. They have been ruled out of order and I fully accept the decision of the Ceann Comhairle but they are similar in intention to these amendments.
For me, one of the really shocking things when we dealt with the legislation at pre-legislative scrutiny is that when we inquired as to whether there had been any attempt by the Department to make an assessment of the impact of the provisions of this Bill on the rents that renters pay, the answer was "No". That is an astounding omission on behalf of Government and here is the reason for that. At the very centre of this Bill, the most significant and controversial aspect is the market reset provision that will, from 1 March this year, allow a landlord to reset the market rent when a new tenant moves in. If the previous tenant left voluntarily or as a result of breach of contract, that market reset will start at the beginning of that tenancy and for all categories of tenant it will be repeated every six years. One would have thought, given the significance of that change, the Department might want to know the answer to two questions. First, how many people is that likely to impact in the first month, six months, 12 months, etc. The second question one would have thought a Minister who is interested in the impact of his legislation on renters would ask is how much extra they are going to pay. They are pretty reasonable questions which these amendments are putting to the Minister, albeit in retrospect because that is all we can do. Thankfully, even though the Minister did not think this was important information to have before bringing such radical proposals to Cabinet, the Residential Tenancies Board publishes the data that anybody with a little bit of time and a spreadsheet can understand.
I would like to put on the record of the House the answers to those questions which these amendments are seeking the Minister to provide, which the Minister should have assessed and provided for himself, his Government colleagues and our committee prior to the passage of the legislation, but it is important that we hear it today. Question one is how many tenants, people or households is the market reset likely to impact month on month from March? Thankfully, the Residential Tenancies Board, over the last two and a half years, produced quarterly data looking at renewed tenancies and new tenancies. We start to get a picture of quarter on quarter, how many new first-time tenancies are created. The dataset is over two and a half years, so it gives us a good picture of what the trends are. The straight answer is, on average, every quarter, 25% or more of registered tenancies are new first-time tenancies. That equates in the last four quarters to over 60,000 new tenancies. Some are single people, some are couples and some are families with children. That means, if those trends continue, the potential number of new first-time tenants impacted by the market reset is somewhere in the region of 60,000 if trends continue. That proposition is supported by the Residential Tenancies Board's other important piece of information that the average length of a tenancy is about three and a half years.
The first thing to say is that we are looking at, from March through to the end of this year and into next year, tens of thousands of renters whom the Minister and his Minister of State, and my colleague, Deputy McGrath from the housing committee, are going to expose to the market reset. That is an indisputable fact. Sure, the changes may result in some changes in patterns and levels of churn, but it is likely they will be minimal. That means huge numbers of people will be impacted by this month on month from March.
It leads us to the next question directly related to the three amendments before us. What is that likely to cost? How much extra rent are Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Lowry and Healy-Rae Independents allowing landlords to charge from that market reset? I appreciate this is going to be uncomfortable listening for some folks on the other side of the Chamber but it is important that we have it on the record. In order to determine or try to work out what the likely cost is, we also have really helpful data from the Residential Tenancies Board every single quarter. Over the last two and a half years, it tells us, Statewide, regionally and in every county, including the Ceann Comhairle's, the Minister's and mine, what rents are being charged on average for existing renters and what the new rents are. That means, on a spreadsheet, you can set out rents for existing renters, rents for new renters, look at the difference and that will give you a pretty reasonable estimation of the potential increased rent from the market reset. In fact, that data is from quarter 2 of 2025, which means the scale of the uplift is likely to be much greater.
What is the answer to the question? Based on the RTB's overall data, anybody hit with the market reset from March is likely to be paying at a minimum 17% more rent than they would have otherwise. That is a significant amount of money. That averages to about €3,000 of additional rent in a year. What the Minister is asking us to vote for is for those people who start new tenancies from March of this year to be paying at a minimum €3,000 more a year. When you start to look at the county breakdowns, this is where it starts to get really interesting. The county-by-county and city breakdowns are utterly staggering. Limerick City, the Minister of State's constituency, will have one of the potentially highest market reset rates in the State at roughly €4,000. What the Minister of State is going to vote for tonight is that renters in his constituency, if they start a new tenancy from the beginning of March, could, over the next 12 months, on the basis of the RTB figures, face €4,000 a year more than under the current regime.
I appreciate that might come as a surprise or shock to the Minister of State, but is it not utterly bizarre that an Opposition Member using RTB figures has to stand on this side of the Chamber five or six months after this was proposed and it may be the first time he is being told the actual impact on the people he claims to represent? Waterford City is in a similar region as well. Let us look at Wexford, a Cheann Comhairle, because it is important we all know the impact of this. I know she is neutral and not involved in this, but the uplift is 21% higher rent than they would otherwise be paying as a consequence of this Bill. That is an extra €2,532 a year. I am sure when she is out in her constituency she will be told it is huge sum of money for a young couple trying to rent to save for a home or for a modest income working person to pay. What about Wicklow? Wicklow will be €4,000. Leitrim will be €3,000. The single biggest uplift, the city that is going to expose renters to the greatest level of additional rent over 12 months, is Galway city at €5,000.
Before we have a conversation, and we will have that conversation today, about supply or tenure - because in both of those, the Minister's arguments are very questionable - the facts, as evidenced by the Residential Tenancies Board in its registration and rent data, are that if this Bill goes through tonight, into the Seanad tomorrow and is passed next week, new renters in new tenancies will be facing potential rent increases in the order of 20%, 25% or 30% more - €2,000, €3,000, €4,000 or, in the case of Galway, €5,000. The Minister has to ask himself what he has against renters. Does he really think renters have that kind of money to pay that extra? We know with data from the ESRI that renters, typically speaking - not exclusively, but typically speaking - have lower incomes. These are the people least able to pay the additional charges. We also know that students, the overwhelming majority of whom do not live in the student-specific accommodation sector but rather live in the private rental sector, typically speaking on nine-month leases not 12 months, come September, are going to get hit substantially again and again. That means, for example, families from the western seaboard, from Donegal, the north west, etc., who do not have significant university places close to them, are going to be hit by phenomenally greater rent increases. We will talk about the mess the Government is making of the student-specific sector later.
The summary is as follows. I have been saying this all week, and it is really interesting because nobody in the Government has responded to this. The summary consequence of this proposal, which these amendments are trying to get to the bottom of, is that somewhere in the region of 60,000 households - singles, couples, families - over the next 12 months, will be asked by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Lowry and Healy-Rae Independents to pay rent increases in the order of €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000. When you strip it all away, that is what is in front of us. That is why I think these amendments are enormously important. They are asking the Minister to do something he should have done and should have published previously.
You might ask why are you so intent on imposing so much hardship on these renters. The Minister has given us the answer. I am sure he will repeat it again today. He will say the only way we can tackle the housing crisis is if we increase supply. The primary approach to increasing supply from this Government is to incentivise large institutional investors from the global markets to come to Ireland and build high-density apartment schemes because, as supply goes up, then, over time, rents will moderate. What utter rubbish. The reason we know it is rubbish is because there is no analysis anywhere, either produced by the Department or anyone else, that tells us that if you increase institutional investment to the high end of the market, high density and high price, it will have any impact on price other than perpetually increasing rent. It is economic absurdity, yet the Minister repeats it as if it is some kind of empirical fact. If he really believes it, he should publish the evidence. Get a bunch of housing and economic experts to produce a report and put it on the table.
In fact, the way the Government is designing this means that not only will new tenants in existing rental stock be hit with a market reset, in most cases, at the start and near the end, but for new apartment stock, that will not even be constrained by the rent pressure zones in between. It will be the CPI. It will be the most aggressive form of inflation possible.
If I were an institutional investor - thankfully, I am not - the Government is guaranteeing me perpetually increasing rents irrespective of what happens for new and sitting tenants, which is something it is also permitting for new student-specific accommodation. Locked into its formula here is an incentive for those investors to continue to increase rents. As we know, because there continues to be an exit of small, semi-professional accidental landlords from the market, for a range of reasons, some of which is dissatisfaction with Government policy, the lower end and lower priced private rental stock will continue to deplete. The only new stock, if we get any significant increase at all, will be high end, high density and high cost. Investors will not be building anything in the Minister's constituency or anything in Limerick. They might build something in the docklands of Cork, in the constituency of the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, but I do not think the hard-working constituents he well-represents at our committee when we talk about affordable homes think that €3,000 a month is affordable for a standard 70 sq. m one-bedroom in the centre of Cork. I do not think anybody elected him or me to advocate for that, but that is what he is voting for here tonight. This will not increase supply in the places it is needed. Where it does increase supply, it will be exceptionally expensive. Meanwhile, the lower cost rental, along with the under-provision of social and affordable and private for-purchase homes, will dissipate.
I will make a final point on these amendments. Every time I am in a debate on these matters with somebody from the Government, the last thing they want to talk about are rents because God forbid we talk about the centrepiece of the legislation. Instead, what the Government keeps talking about is that it is giving people real security of tenure and new shiny six-year tenancies where they cannot be evicted. First, under Part 4 of the Residential Tenancies Act, we already have six-year tenancies. They used to be for four years and are now for six; they already exist. Second, existing tenants who remain in their current properties, and Deputy Hearne made this point on Second Stage, get no benefit. New tenants of small landlords can still be evicted during that six-year period. There is a bit of a restriction, but there are still three significant grounds upon which notice of termination can be provided. For large landlords, the Government is finally putting on the Statute Book what already exists in practice, which is institutional investors only evicting for breach of contract.
The problem is, and this relates directly back to these amendments, what value is security of tenure if people cannot afford the rent? It is almost as if the Minister has forgotten why rent pressure zones were introduced in the first place. I was never a supporter of rent pressure zones. I sat up there and argued tooth and nail that Simon Coveney was getting it wrong and tabled amendments that the Government would not accept. Much of our criticisms of the rent pressure zones - many of us voted against them in the end - came to pass. They provided modest protection for some but you could not have made a bigger hames of rent regulation than Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil at the time. The reason rent pressure zones were introduced was that from 2014 to 2016 a new phenomenon had entered our housing system: child and family homelessness. That is something that in 2011 was virtually unheard of but because of double-digit rising rents the number of families and children entering emergency accommodation rose for one reason and one reason only; an inability to pay a legally sanctioned rent increase from the Government, which forced them into homelessness. It was double-digit rental inflation. Rent pressure zones put some level of pause on that, but what the Government is proposing here is to go back to double-digit rental inflation.
Deputy Boyd Barrett made a point that has to be emphasised over and over again. Last year, about 20,000 eviction notices or notices of termination were issued. Many of the people who got those notices were waiting incredibly long periods for social housing. Their rent was subsidised by the housing assistance payment, HAP. Today, the gap between HAP and new rents is already too great for the vast majority of those people. If another €3,000, €4,000 or €5,000 is added on to those new rents, it is game over. Why would the Minister, a year into his job, when child and family homelessness is rising, introduce a policy that every single policy expert, front-line homeless service provider and anybody who can count is telling him will increase and accelerate the rate at which families with children will be in homelessness? We will all stand here, month after month, and remind the Government that it took this decision. It took a decision to allow market rents to increase to double digits. As a consequence of that, people who desperately need private rental cannot get it and are pushed into homelessness.
The Minister will accuse me of personalising it when I do this at some later stage, but that means he is directly responsible, by the actions and legislation he is promoting, securing Cabinet approval for and getting the approval of backbenchers, for all of that. It will push up rents and will not increase supply to any significant level. Where it does result in increased supply, it will be expensive and inappropriate and will lead to increased levels of homelessness. The Government is introducing a security of tenure regime that is so complex it will be very difficult to explain, even harder to understand and virtually impossible to enforce. I have been here for a decade and I have seen some pretty politically shabby pieces of rent reform in terms of what the Government asked officials to do. This is by far the worst in a decade. This is what the Minister will be remembered for. The legacy he is going to leave is higher and ever-increasing rents, far greater financial pressure on renters, rising levels of homelessness and a security of tenure regime, which I will put money on today we will be back here about in two, three or four years' time. Whoever replaces the Minister for the mess he will have left will be trying to undo and unpick this, just as we stood here with Simon Coveney in 2016 and pleaded with him to do it properly, do it right, listen to the experts and to those people who know better. He ignored us, Eoghan Murphy ignored us, Darragh O'Brien ignored us and now the Minister is ignoring us. The consequence will be more housing failure.
There are eminently sensible amendments. I am happy to support them. I am very interested in hearing the Minister's response to what I have said and I will continue the debate. Without doubt, this will be remembered as one of the worst interventions in the private rental market in recent history and it will be the name of the Minister, Deputy James Browne, that will be associated with it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-11