Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-19
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Ivana Bacik (LAB), Dublin Bay South

I welcome Austin Appelbee and his family. Austin, you inspired us all with your immense courage. Well done.
In March, reports emerged of mass evictions across the country as a result of the new Fianna Fáil rent law. When I raised this with the Taoiseach at the time he told me that the facts did not bear out any connection. However, the latest figures from the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, confirm exactly what we previously warned him about. The botched so-called rental reforms have indeed triggered what has now become a wave of evictions. In the first three months of this year alone, more than 7,000 eviction notices were issued, which is a 50% increase from last year. These figures should not come as a shock. They are the inevitable consequence of the Government's policies. It gave private landlords a year's notice that they could jack up rents, but only if they got rid of existing tenants before the end of March. Families and children are suffering as a result. Threshold has supported more than 10,000 households in the first three months of this year alone. That is 3% of all households in the private rented sector in just 12 weeks. Behind every notice to quit is a person or family living in utter fear.
Out in Galway and Dublin over recent weeks I have met renters in tears as they wonder where they will go next, like the family I met in Cabra of two parents, both working, and two teenage children. They have spent the past 18 months in cramped conditions in a homeless hub because they simply cannot find anywhere to rent or buy. I have spoken before about our Labour representatives' experience of meeting renters contemplating suicide because their situation is so utterly desperate. People need hope and they need Government action to resolve the housing crisis.
What action has the Government taken? It rushed deeply flawed legislation through, guillotined the debate, ignored multiple amendments from Labour's Deputy Conor Sheehan and other Opposition parties and the Taoiseach literally scoffed at us in the Chamber when we warned this measure was effectively an incentive to evict and an amnesty on rent hikes. The Tánaiste even told me the measure, in his words, actually "protects renters"? However, what kind of protections are these for renters who have already endured more than a decade of failure from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, where rents have more than doubled in ten years? This is before the full impact of the Government's market reset and rent hikes to come. The Taoiseach said last weekend that the defining challenge of our time is to give hope to young people that they can find an affordable home, but his policies are leading to thousands of young people being evicted from their homes. He has achieved the highest level of evictions since the Famine, the highest level of child homelessness ever and he has nothing to offer renters. Unlike him, we have put forward constructive proposals. We have published legislation for an emergency three-year eviction ban. Will the Taoiseach support Labour's Bill and will he intervene to stop the tsunami of evictions and keep children out of homelessness?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-19/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-19