Rental Sector Dail Éireann — 2025-10-14 ============================================================ Danny Healy-Rae (IND), Kerry I thank the Minister of State very much for being here so late at night. I know she will relay my concerns to the Minister. Many people, including me do not believe it is fair to lock a landlord into a rental agreement for six years. This failed in Scotland, where the authorities have gone back to the arrangement they had in 2016. I am concerned about the Minister of State’s figures because, to me, having been a public representative in Kerry for over 20 years, I have never seen the like of what is happening, including to the 14-house estate in Killarney, and there are many more of those. Day after day, I hear about affected girls with one or two children and couples with two or three children. Every day, they ask where they should go. I am afraid this will blow up altogether in the next couple of months because everyone is sending out notices so they will be clear for 1 March. That is my concern and why I have raised this matter today. I am afraid that what is proposed will not work. I have the history. There is no stir on the 55 houses along the road from Kenmare through Kilgarvan to Killarney. The reason is the owners will not enter agreements because they are afraid they will not get their houses back. Another reason is that they would have to pay half the rental income in tax if they had some other income. This will affect the people with one, two or three houses. They will not be bothered to go ahead with renting as soon as the existing tenancies end. They will be out of the market. Whatever they do with the houses, they will not rent them at all. That is what I am hearing from them. They will forget about renting privately, whatever else they do. The Department has to review this because it is not fair. Will tenants be locked into the six-year agreement? I know that the tenants want to move around too. They have to follow their jobs, but they cannot continue to travel. We know the cost of travelling, and we are told about carbon emissions and all that. Will the Minister of State look at this issue again, particularly as what is happening is hurting a lot of people? --- 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/2025-10-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:04+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-10-14