Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-08
============================================================

Eoin Ó Broin (SF), Dublin Mid-West

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and Minister. We will deal with the substance of the exempted development regulations when they come to committee on Tuesday of next week. Many of us on this side of the House have long argued for some flexibility in our planning code for family members to be able to provide free-standing residential extensions in back gardens for direct family members. That is a matter we will debate next week.
From our party's point of view, we do not under any circumstances support the renting out of free-standing residential extensions in back gardens. What is worse about these amendments is that not only will the Minister permit it, those who will rent such dwellings will have no tenancy rights whatsoever. These amendments will completely strip them of any of the protections under the Residential Tenancies Act in terms of rent setting or capping, notices of termination and all of the other protections that tenants have.
My concern is that not only will the Minister strip a group of renters of their rights into the future, he is also doing something that is contrary to a century of tenancy legislation. The definition of a tenancy for very long period in this State, before and since the passing of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, is exclusive occupation of a dwelling.
The whole idea of a licensee is that they do not have exclusive occupation of a dwelling. Rather, they are renting a room in somebody else's principal private residence and share their kitchen, bathroom, etc. These are free-standing residential structures and will have bathrooms, kitchens and a front door. They will share some services and road and pedestrian access, but they are dwellings in which the renter will have exclusive occupation. I suspect this will end up being challenged in the courts and the outcome of that will be very interesting. The bottom line is that a person who has exclusive occupation of a property they rent should be considered under law a tenant and have the full protections of the Residential Tenancies Act. Notwithstanding a separate substantive debate on the exempted development regulations will have next week, this is an incredibly retrograde step and one to which we are fundamentally opposed.

---

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/2026-07-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-08