Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-02-11 ============================================================ Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central The Minister of State said no one has a monopoly on compassion. I have a couple of questions for him and the Minister. How many children must become homeless before they admit their policies are wrong and are contributing to making homelessness worse? It is a straightforward question. Will they give a commitment that this Bill will not drive up rents? Everyone on this side of the Chamber and every expert who presented to the housing committee said it will but the Government is saying we are all wrong. Will they give a commitment that the Bill will not drive up notices to quit and evictions over the coming months? Will they give a commitment that the Bill will reduce homelessness? None of us believes any of those claims. I have asked direct, straight and hard questions. The Minister and the Ministers of State are telling us the Bill will help to solve the housing crisis and homelessness emergency and provide additional homes. We do not believe it will do so. We believe the result will be the opposite. We were told we were wrong by the previous Ministers, Deputy O'Brien, Simon Coveney and Eoghan Murphy. They brought in policies and told us we were all wrong and these would fix them. The Government is coming back here again now telling us we are wrong again when there are over 5,000 children homeless tonight, and that is not even counting the hidden homeless. Can we have straight answers to straight questions? The Minister, Deputy Browne, said there will be a review in 12 months after this legislation comes in to see how it operates. In 12 months' time, after this has come in, if rents, evictions and child homelessness increase, will the Government fall on its sword and admit it was wrong? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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