Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-11
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Rory Hearne (SD), Dublin North-West

As I have stated previously, this Bill will be deeply damaging for renters. When we talk about renters, who are we talking about? We are talking about families, individuals and young people who are trying to work, go to school, go to college and live their lives. This Bill increases rents in a way that will absolutely hammer people. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Minister are completely disconnected from the reality of what is involved in trying to rent a home right now. If they had any sense of what it is like to rent or to try to find somewhere to rent, they would not be doing this. Earlier, the Taoiseach stated that this is what we have to do in order to get supply. The Minister also stated that this is what is needed to get supply and that at some point supply will increase and rents will come down.
I have asked the Minister and the Taoiseach the following question on a number of occasions. Neither has answered it. At what point will this policy incentivise a level of supply that will bring rents down? Will it be in five, ten or 15 years' time? It is never. Rents are never going to come down unless they crash, and then we will have an economic crash. That is the only point at which rents are going to come back down to any sort of sustainable level. In the context of this policy, the Minister is saying clearly that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents are willing to sacrifice these renters, who will have to pay higher rents in the coming months and years to incentivise a supply of housing that at some point will lead to rents coming down.
My colleague Deputy Eoin Ó Broin referred earlier to officials. I asked the officials who appeared before the housing committee the point at which this policy will bring down rents. They said they hope that it will bring down rents. This Bill is based on a flawed market theory of housing that completely fails to understand how housing markets and systems work. They do not work like normal market commodities, with supply and demand and prices going up and down. I was asked about this earlier. Some might ask whether it is the case that if the market price is not what a renter is willing to pay and if a landlord can get that market price, is that not reasonable? However, housing is not a banana or a car. It is a fundamental human need. When people are faced with either having or not having a home, they will pay absolutely everything they can to get one.
If the rent is determined by the market, landlords will squeeze as much as they can get out of it and people are forced to pay more and more. It is not like buying a car or a banana; they do not have a choice. They need a home, and so they spend everything they have to get it. That is why housing markets are regulated and why there are rent controls. It is the reason the Government brought in rent controls in the first instance, but now it is undoing that and has been captured and has once more bought into thinking that housing markets work like the normal supply-and-demand models highlighted in junior certificate economics. This is not junior certificate economics. This is people's lives. It is the lives of hundreds of thousands of current and future renters. The Taoiseach has told the Opposition that it has no monopoly on compassion, that those in government are also compassionate and that Fianna Fáil was and is the party of a social conscience.
There is no social conscience in this decision. It is a cruel, crude, cold decision that the Minister knows and has agreed will lead to higher rents. Who is going to pay those rents? Has he thought about that? It is going to be families who are struggling to try to cover rents now. They are going to be evicted. This is the other flaw with the Bill. The Minister and the Taoiseach have both stated, very misleadingly, that this Bill is about increased security of tenure for renters. That is absolutely untrue. This is not about increased security of tenure for renters. All existing renters will get no new security of tenure. Again, the Taoiseach stated earlier that this will have no impact on existing renters. That is the point. It provides no additional protections from no-fault evictions for existing renters, so we are going to continue to see a tsunami of evictions.
I am not sure how the Minister feels about the fact that we have reached the highest level of evictions in this country since Famine times. That is what we are seeing. I do not know how the Minister stands over that or how he stands over a Bill that will make the situation worse. Not only are we going to continue to have the pressure of evictions like those that are happening for various reasons, mainly because landlords are selling up, now, we are also going to have a situation where some landlords will be licking their lips at the thought that they can get market rents if they get particular tenants out of their properties and that they will no longer be subject to the inter-tenancy rent cap.
The really disappointing part of this Bill is that it came about on foot of a decision that was made directly as a result of lobbying by institutional investors. The lobbying record, as I have stated previously, makes this very clear. Irish Institutional Property represents all the big institutional funds, including IRES REIT, Kennedy Wilson and Ardstone. I have a copy of the lobbying register here. It shows the number of times Pat Farrell from Irish Institutional Property has met with the Government in respect of these policies - there is a list of meeting after meeting - and to push for these changes. Killian Woods wrote an article about IRES REIT in the Business Post last August. It talks about how IRES REIT, which is one of Ireland's biggest private landlords, with more than 3,500 properties, is so happy. It states:
From Ires Reit’s perspective, the most eye-catching change was the new measure that now allows landlords to reset rents to market rates between tenancies. Under the current measures, landlords are required to maintain rents at the same level between tenancies.
The article describes how a representative of IRES REIT showed investors a chart which indicated that its average current rents are estimated to be 19% below market rent. The article then states:
Under the new rent control rules, there is a windfall sitting there for the company. It has the opportunity to unlock an additional €19.9 million of rent a year by raising rents to market rate.
IRES REIT is going to get €20 million a year from the measures contained in the Bill. Kennedy Wilson will be similar. The Government is going to give these investors €20 million a year as each churn happens, and renters will be required to pay the market rent.
This Bill has nothing to do with security of tenure, renters or balancing the rights of renters and landlords. It is about giving a windfall to institutional investors in this country, namely large corporate landlords. That is what it is about. The Government has bought in - hook, line and sinker - to their idea that if we allow rents to rise higher, supply will increase, the unit numbers will rise and that will deal with the housing crisis. The complete opposite is the case. This Bill will make the housing crisis substantially worse. It is a disastrous measure for renters and young people who are stuck at home.
It will put it more out of reach. It will put home ownership more out of reach. It is incredible really when we think how far Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have come from being the parties supposedly of home ownership to now being the parties of the big institutional investors. They are willingly making policy and laws to screw renters and the younger generation so that the institutional investors can make more profit. The Government is happy to stand over that.
I mentioned earlier the disconnect from the human misery this Bill is going to bring about. What has really disturbed me about all the discussion about this has been that disconnection. It terrifies me because what it says to me is that the Government is not actually concerned about this mass of human misery and the social catastrophe that is happening because it is willing to inflict more. It tells me that what it wants to do and what it is doing is putting in place policies that do not solve the housing crisis or make housing more affordable but simply keep the market going. This is, ultimately, another subsidisation of the private market to add to the very significant subsidies the Government gives out. I put the figures together there, and between the VAT cuts introduced in the budget, the HAP that goes to private landlords and Croí Cónaithe subsidies, we are talking about over €1 billion a year going to the private market every year. The figure over the lifetime of the Government will be €5 billion. This is €5 billion it will give to the private market with no permanent housing in return and no public housing delivered. We are talking about €5 billion. The Government says it will not create a State construction company because it will take too long and the Government is not sure. A fraction of that amount would set up a public construction company to build genuinely affordable homes.
The Government is not interested in solving the housing crisis. It just wants to keep the market going. It wants to keep the investors, the property developers, the banks and the system going as is because if it were interested in solving the housing crisis, it would realise that what it is doing with this is actually embedding an unsustainable market. That is what the Government is doing because these rents are completely unsustainable. I looked at the rents being charged on daft.ie and I look around the country. People are expected to pay thousands of euro every month. For example, in Cork, people have been charged €4,800 for a four-bedroom property. In Santry in my own constituency, the rent for a two-bed is €2,500 per month, the rent for a two-bed in Beaumont is €2,700 and the rent for a three-bedroom home in Galway is €3,000. This is a picture of the new units being built in Northwood in Santry. What are they charging? They are charging €1,900 for a studio, €2,600 for a two-bed apartment and €3,300 for a three-bed. This is before the Government's changes come in. When we look at the income of a teacher on €44,000, after taxes, we are talking about in the region of 117% of his or her entire take-home pay to pay rent of €3,300. If we take a nurse on €37,000, we are talking about 127% of his or her entire take-home pay. The percentage for a person on the minimum wage with take-home pay of €1,900 a month is 168% of their take-home pay. It is impossible to pay these rents. This is how the Government expects an economy and society to function. Where are we going to get our nurses, teachers, bus drivers or doctors from? That is in our cities. They cannot function in many ways at the moment because of these policies.
It is deeply frustrating for many people around the country who are going to see their rents increased to market rent. It will not build one home for them. While it might incentivise a certain amount of really expensive apartments being built in Dublin, it will not build one new home in Carrick-on-Suir, Kerry, Louth, Donegal or Mayo. All the renters in those counties will face higher market rents, because all landlords will be able to bring the rent up to market rent when a tenant moves out or every six years in the new tenancies in those parts of the country, and they will not see one new unit from these measures. Not one new unit will be built by an institutional investor, which the Government is making these decisions for.
It is a disastrous policy and it just shows how disconnected Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are from the reality of this housing crisis. Unfortunately, it is not going to work and the housing crisis will continue. What will the Government bring about? It will bring about higher rents for renters. It is deeply disappointing and frustrating and we will continue to talk about this in terms of the disaster that the Government is going to make worse.

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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