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

I am here to speak on behalf of tenants and renters in towns in Laois like Portlaoise, Mountmellick, Portarlington, Mountrath, Rathdowney, Graiguecullen, Stradbally and so on. I am meeting people regularly, daily sometimes, who are struggling because of the situation with housing and the high rents they are paying. The Government is bringing in a measure. We have heard the RTB projections in the debate. The Minister can contradict them if he likes. It knows, and the people who look for this know, that this is going to lead to a further increase. The market keeps getting talked about, the altar of the market. The high priests at the altar are the landlords, developers and vulture funds. They are there as the high priests.
During previous terms of the Government being in power, sometimes with the Progressive Democrats, that brought us to the Celtic tiger, we saw what the deregulation of the building industry did when we allowed people to self-certify. The taxpayer is cleaning up that bill in the form of the mica Bill and the financial bill for it and in the form of fire remedies in apartments. If I heard right, I think it is 20,000 apartments, a lot of them in Dublin, because of what the Government did at that time. The taxpayer picks up the bill - Joe and Mary Public. I want to represent those people who are paying that.
I have been a Member of this House for 15 years, like Deputy Boyd Barrett. This week or last week we were here 15 years. This is one of the worst pieces of legislation and one of the most dangerous I have seen. That is why I am speaking passionately about this. I feel strongly about this and I am really concerned. I am not going to personalise anything and I am not looking to have a go at anybody, but I am concerned about what the Government is doing here. I told the Government to look back at when it adored the altar of the market in the early 2000s as we went through the Celtic tiger. Look at the mess it left behind. We are still cleaning up that mess. The taxpayer is cleaning it up. We are still paying the interest on the bank bailout from that time. We are still paying the bill for the mica scandal. We are still going to pay the bill for the fire remedies in all those apartments that people have mortgages on and they are renting in unsafe apartments around Dublin. I looked at one. One was on television. I think it was last night. The outside of it was covered in timber. You would think about Grenfell Tower. I am saying this honestly to the Minister and Minister of State. Who in the name of God allowed that to happen? Talk about a tinder-box. That is the conclusion we came to when looking at a repeat of the programme last night. I think it was a "Prime Time" programme in relation to the timber cladding on the outside of it. Dry timber was on the outside of it and no fire breaks were inside. That is what the Government allowed.
The Government allowed the banks to give out money. I have met people who got loans from banks who never should have got them. There were loan consultants in banks. These jack-the-lads were smart lads. They were supposed to be smarter than the rest of us. They gave money to people who did not have the capacity to repay it. Why? The high altar of the market was adored and the high priests at it told the Government this was what was needed to do it, Seánie Fitz and the boys. That is what happened. I am thinking of one couple. They have been dealing with it for 12 years in Laois trying to keep them in the house they are in, and if not, trying to get them into social housing. They have had a notice to quit from Pepper hanging over them for 12 years. It has employed Mars Capital, Eversheds and all sorts of arm-twisters and debt collectors to try to turn the screws on these two people to get them out of where they are, who should never have received a loan. If you were a member of the loan committee on the credit union, you would not give them one tenth of what they got as a loan. I am saying that honestly. It is the high altar of the market.
The Minister says, and stated repeatedly, that if we increase supply, we will have loads of houses and be able to reduce rent. I ask him to go back and look at the data from the last time his party was in government for a sufficiently long term. I am saying this to him honestly, just to be factual about it. Did rents go down in 2005 or 2006, the year we built 94,000 houses? Did rents go down in 2007? No, they did not. Supply shot up. We had loads of houses. In fact, we did not have people to fill some of them. Rents did not go down. I can think of all the estates around where I live. I live in the middle of a whole lot of new estates. I can think of those estates where the rents shot up. Some houses were empty. Landlords, developers and speculators who bought them were willing to wait for people to come along and rent them. They kept the rents high. That is what they did. They eventually got it.
At the moment, unless the Minister is in a parallel universe to me, the people who I meet who are renting are already in serious hardship. They are paying a lot more, in most cases, than what people are paying on mortgages. That is a fact. Laois has around 13,000 people commuting out of it every morning. Along with paying for the car to get to work, mainly in Dublin or Naas or somewhere, along with that, they are paying for childminding and a whole range of things. They are already living a very difficult life. I can tell the Minister it is no fun. I am here to try to represent and put this to the Minister. If I do not do this tonight, I am neglecting my duties as a Teachta Dála. I am appealing to the Minister on this.
If the Minister takes off whatever cooling effect the RPZs and the current status has, despite which, as I told the Minister earlier, rents on new lets in Laois have nonetheless gone up by over 16% in one survey and 15% in another compared with existing tenancies - the figures are there; they are not my figures - what is going to happen after 1 March? We need to stabilise rents. That requires rent limits. I have put in a reasonable proposal in my amendment that they would not go beyond 2% per year or inflation through the consumer price index, whichever is the lower. That is reasonable. We need to have some limits on it. We need to increase the amount of cost rentals. It is tiny at the moment. I welcome what is happening. I welcome the fact that the Government is moving on that and on affordable housing, but it is not enough and it is not quick enough.
That needs to be accelerated. We cannot create a situation where people will suffer more hardship, misery and stress. There will be more evictions.
One other effect of what the Government is going to do that has not been talked about is the wealth transfer to landlords and big developers. What will happen is when rents go up, it means HAP will have to go up and have to chase that increase in rent. This is a point the Government needs to take on board. The Minister and Minister of State will see the figures for last year on how much is spent on leasing, HAP and homeless accommodation. It is a huge part of the housing budget. I want to see the housing budget used well and to see us getting value out of it. The Minister is correct that it is taxpayers' money but the amount of that going on HAP and supplements will have to increase. Due to the measure the Government is bringing in, it will be chasing that. That is what happened with every other change it made, which made this worse. It had the same impact. The amount of HAP and that transfer of wealth from the public purse to these big landlords increased.
We have to give people the space to be able to move towards buying. As was mentioned, there is a huge amount of money on deposit in this country. We have a very high level of personal debt but we also have a huge amount of money on deposit. I remember that in 2013 or 2014, the credit unions stated they had around €10 billion or €11 billion. I am open to correction but the figure was something like that. We are willing to use some of this to be invested in a type of housing bond where there would be a modest return on it for the people who invest in the credit union. The banks have that. There is a huge amount of money on deposit, which could be used, and used well, in investment bonds and housing bonds to build the type of cost-rental and affordable housing we need. I do not know why the Government has not considered that. I can only draw the conclusion that it is listening too much to the wrong people.
I learned something very quickly nearly three decades ago as a councillor. If we listened to everybody who came in the door to lobby for this, that and the other, and did it and went along with it, we would have made a right mess of things. When we listened to them too much, we did make a mess of things. You have to learn from your mistakes. Sometimes, you have to do the right thing and do what is right by people. Money is there on deposit. We need to set up housing bonds and have them in place. We need to use that money and taxpayers' money well. The Government is using it to increase skyrocketing rents, which will happen. Everything that is there, all the evidence and all the projections tell us that. To chase and have that transfer of wealth to pay rent supplements to big landlords will make matters a hundred times worse. That is what is going to happen.
As I said, three of us who are voting on this tonight, hopefully, are from Laois; a Fine Gael TD, a Fianna Fáil TD and myself. As the Government is framing the Bill without the amendments, I have to vote against it. This is not because I want to be obstructionist or do down any good suggestion. Tenancy certainty would be a good thing, as would fixity of tenure. Michael Davitt talked about it 150 years ago, when some of our great-grandparents might have been around, yet here we are now. The problem is what the Government is cloaking the six-year thing in is a Trojan horse for the other measures that will nullify and kill that for the reasons outlined because people will not be able to afford those rents.

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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