Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-11
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Brian Stanley (IND), Laois

I support amendments Nos. 2, 7 and 8 in relation to reviews and reports. The Minister and the Minister of State know what is going to happen here because we can see it already. We could see it from the moment they announced this in autumn last year. We can see what is happening – notices to quit are increasing, rents are increasing and pressure on tenants to move out is increasing. This is because many landlords – I am not putting all of them in the one box – and especially the bigger ones know that come 1 March the sky is the limit. This evening the Government is planning on ramming through this legislation. We are TDs but we are human beings as well. I ask the Minister and the Minister of State here to think about the people who are in private rented accommodation - I know some of them, and the two Ministers here know them - who are spending 50% or 55% of their total income on rent. That means there is not enough money for food, clothes, to heat the place, for their kids or a whole range of other things, and that is just the basics to get through life. I ask them to think about those people for a minute.
Three Laois TDs will have a vote on this – one Fianna Fáil TD, one Fine Gael TD and an Independent, yours truly - and I dearly wish all three of us were voting together on it. I get that the six-year certainty around tenancy is a good thing but the problem is what the Government is bringing in on the back of it. It is a Trojan Horse. It will have huge implications. My amendment, and I hope we will get to it, is around trying to limit it to 2% or the rate of inflation, the CPI. Who is the rate of inflation not good enough for? Who is 2% not good enough for? Who is lobbying for this? Is the Irish Property Owners Association getting everything it wants? Are the developers getting everything? They have got everything they want – the VAT cuts, the tax breaks and everything else they wanted.
I want to see more housing but what the Government is doing is a charter for misery and further misery. The Minister knows it and I know it because I meet these people – ordinary working people. These are couples, lone parents and all sorts of ordinary workers trying to get by. It is pensioners too. This is one coming down the line. People sitting here in ten years' time will have to deal with a tsunami of pensioners who are in private rented accommodation. The State will end up supplementing that if we do not do better about cost rental and if we do not do something to slow down rent increases. The RPZs were not perfect. They had some cooling effects but, despite them, daft.ie and other surveys show that rents for new tenancies in County Laois over the last two years have increased 15% to 16% over existing tenancies. If that is happening at a time when we have RPZs, what in the name of the Lord God almighty is going to happen when you remove all of this and you can say the market rent? The market rent is the highest in an area or district. The Minister knows how it is going to work. There is talk of how there will not be no-fault evictions. There will be evictions. There will be notices to quit for the simple reason, as I have pointed out numerous times, that the rents will be so high that people will not be able to afford them. The landlords who are inclined to have a rack-renting attitude face 1 March with this gift in their hands. Make no mistake - it will be used. I am not saying every landlord will use it but the rack-renting ones and the bigger ones will.
Tenants going into new apartments and housing will face extortionate increases. The tenancies do not last six years, and we know there can be a quick turnover. There is a three-year provision for students. I have a granddaughter who is going to college, and she commutes five hours a day. She would not have a hope of being able to stay near the college, and it is the same for her pals. The simple reason is that rents are already too high. What is going to happen when this comes through in the private sector?
The renters in Laois will be very hard hit. I am already seeing increases in the rent pressure zones. Despite some cooling effects, the fact is that new tenancies are already 15%, 16% or 17% higher in the last two years. A one-bedroom apartment across the road from my office was on the market for €1,750 per month. A very small house in Kilminchy was €2,100 a month. In Foxburrow, a four-bedroomed house, which was not huge, was €2,500 a month. People cannot afford that. Look at the average wage and take-home pay. Some of these people are paying for crèches and commuting, they have to make payments on two cars, and they are trying to save for deposits and do a whole range of things. They are literally strapped in trying to carry out all of this.
For those landlords who are unscrupulous, the race will be to get to the top. I support the idea of reviews and reports, but that in itself will not be enough. That is why the amendment tries to limit this to 2%. I recognise there is inflation, and I am trying to be somewhat reasonable about this. However, this will mean that all impediments to skyrocketing rents are removed. Existing tenants in homes and apartments are being put under huge pressure and will be put under more pressure due to higher rents. This measure will provide a climate for that to happen. There will be strategic notices to quit, as I said, because people will not be able to afford this.
I appeal to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs not to vote this through. This will hurt tens of thousands of tenants who are already struggling to keep their heads above water and who already have to deal with difficulties. I have never come into this House and said there is a magic wand. I know this is a complex thing to sort out. However, I also know that a number of things need to happen. Within the gift of the State is one of those things, which is to increase the supply of cost-rental housing for those who are middle aged and who will never be able to get a loan again, or perhaps those who have come out of a broken marriage. They need to be able to get into cost rental. We need to help those people and provide a not-for-profit option that will pay for itself over time. The Minister knows how it works. I remember talking about the need for cost rental here 12 or 13 years ago, when people did not know what we were talking about. I welcome the fact that the Government is moving in that direction, but we need to move more quickly. We need more of this.
The mass production of houses is a drum that I have banged loudly in this Chamber. As I said yesterday to the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, for the first time, the point has arrived with the council engineers and architects that we need to be able to mass-produce. Mass production means speeding up and reducing costs. While there has been a lot of talk from the officials in the Department about standardised design and so on, this has now gone a step further. There are real standardised plans so that houses can be the very same internally, although the outside texture can be changed if the county council wants to do that. That will enable matters to be speeded up and will remove a lot of the blockages. I say sincerely to the Minister and the Minister of State that they should do anything else they can to accelerate that. We do not want to drop standards, and I am not arguing for that. However, we need to do whatever we can to accelerate delivery and reduce costs. The money is there. We know it is taxpayers' money and we have used it well. I will certainly support anything we can do to reduce costs and increase supply.
I recognise that not all of it will be provided by the State, and I am not arguing for that. However, the State is a big player. It is because the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil in the late nineties decided that we would just opt out of social housing that we have the mess we have. We had the crash because the regulations were taken off construction and the banks, and we wound up in the situation we are in now. It is a difficult situation.
I have argued over the last 15 years to increase the number of apprentices. We must do that because we cannot build houses unless we have the people. Let us try to attract back from abroad more of the workers who went during that period and might wish to come back now. We need to increase the labour supply and ensure we have sufficient workers to build houses.
People want to save for a deposit, but they cannot do so while paying these rents. They are not affordable for young people or the cohort of middle-aged and elderly people I have referred to. I recently came across a couple who are almost 80. The local authority, Laois County Council, currently houses them. I do not mean to plámás the council, but it has really stretched itself to try to do its best. I know the Minister is there on Friday, which I welcome. It is always good to see Ministers in the constituency. The one message I would give to the Minister is to come and see what is being done. We want more of it, and we want it replicated in other parts of the country.
I ask the Minister not to force this through. The Irish Property Owners Association is getting what it wants. The developers are getting what they want. However, tenants are suffering hardship, stress and misery, as well as workers, students, lone parents and ordinary people. Let us think about those people. Let us not force through this Bill tonight. This needs to be rowed back on. We cannot heap more pressure and stress on those people.

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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