Sometimes, what the Minister does not say is more revealing than what he does say. I stated earlier that on the basis of data from the Residential Tenancies Board, within 12 months of the enactment of this Bill, anywhere in the region of 60,000 households will be impacted by the market reset. The Minister has not challenged that. In any of the radio or TV debates I have taken part in, nobody has challenged it. This means that the Minister is accepting the RTB's data that over the next 12 months at least 60,000 hous…

I know it might be difficult to hear the real-world financial consequences of what he will be voting for, but in Cork, the extra rent that will be imposed on new tenancies from 1 March in a year will be €3,100 across the city and county. In the city specifically, it will be almost €4,000. I will ask the Minister a very simple question. How is increasing rents in every county in the State going to contribute to increasing the kind of supply needed in every county? Is the Minister of State seriously suggesting that i…

The Minister of State knows that the only investors who are interested in these kinds of rents are those - the Minister of State was not here earlier so I will repeat it for his benefit - who might invest in the docklands area of Cork and in very high-end, high-cost parts of Dublin. The Minister and the Minister of State are going to ask their constituents to pay somewhere in the region of an extra €3,000 per year for new tenancies. The Minister had an opportunity to dispute the RTB data and he chose not to. If he …

-----but what the Government is proposing and what it is going to------

The Minister of State was smirking.

I am quite happy to engage. If this was a proper Committee Stage debate, we would be able to have these types of engagements. That is one of the things we have been denied. Let us be very clear. Double-digit rental inflation leaves renters unable to pay their rent. They get into rent arrears, they get a notice of termination for non-payment of rent and they get evicted. That is what happens. What is the Government proposing for new renters in County Carlow? Potential rent increases in the first year of 29%. For Cou…

I invite the Minister to come back in here and prove that we were wrong and that he was right. If the Minister has the courage of his convictions and if he had a credible analysis of the Bill, which he does not, he would agree to that without doubt. We cannot even get the Minister into a television studio to debate with us on any of these matters, so I doubt that he would be willing to give the time for a debate here. As the month-on-month and quarter-on-quarter figures come in, we are going to see the consequences…

Eoghan Murphy made all the same promises. It is almost like Groundhog Day. What happened? Homelessness, rents and house prices rose, and the right kind of supply never materialised. The Minister's party colleague Darragh O'Brien probably made more promises than anybody else. It was a case of "Darragh gets it done", as Oliver Callan used to say in his sketches. What happened? The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, might tell us what happened while Darragh O'Brien was Minister.

I will tell him what happened. Homelessness rose. I know it is funny. I know the Minister of State thinks it is hilarious. As a consequence of the policies of the Minister of State's party, real people ended up in emergency accommodation who should never have ended up there. That is the consequences of what you guys do, and you are doing it again. You are doing it in a far more serious manner than you have done in a decade. That is why none of us on this side of the House will make any apologies for highlighting th…

The reason this is more like a Second Stage debate is because the Government forced us to have the Committee and Remaining Stages on the floor on the Dáil instead of us having Committee Stage as normal in a committee room where we would have had a completely different type of engagement as we always do. That was an imposition by the Government. We all wanted and argued at the Business Committee that the Committee Stage should be taken in the normal manner. For the Minister, after the Government deliberately decided…

Except for breach of contract.

Except for breach of contract.

It is just a clarification, I am not heckling. Except for breach of contract.

Surely breach of contract is also-----

The rip-off rent hike Bill before us today is without doubt the most profound change to the regulation of the private rental sector in over a decade. Much more significant than that, at the core of this Bill, is nothing short of a vicious financial assault on private renters who are already living in the most expensive and insecure form of housing in the State. The consequence of this legislation over a relatively short period of time will be significantly increased financial hardship for renters; more and more peo…

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on this important issue. There is a certain degree of scepticism in my attitude to the Government's new-found interest in critical infrastructure. I have been a Deputy for a decade. I am one of a number of people on this side of the House who have been talking about lack of investment, lack of reform and lack of ambition regarding critical infrastructure and delivery of key projects involving housing, renewable energy and public transport. Despite the fact we have many tim…

We understand that on Tuesday the Minister intends to bring his rip-off rent hike Bill to Cabinet for approval, a Bill that will sound the death knell effectively, over time, of rent pressure zones, RPZs. This is going to result in ever greater numbers of renters having their rent reset to the market rate. Will the Minister confirm to the House that the overwhelming majority of renters, over a period of four years, will effectively lose the meagre rent pressure zone protections as a consequence of his actions?

The average length of a tenancy in the private rental sector is three and a half years and 25% of all tenancy registrations in a year are first-time tenancies. Students, particularly those in purpose-built student accommodation, typically rent year to year. The direct consequence of the legislation the Minister is going to bring to Cabinet on Tuesday is that from 1 March, ever greater numbers of renters will see already-unaffordable rents rise even higher. That is what he is doing. For some, it will be at the begin…

The only certainty the Government is going create with this legislation is that hard-pressed renters who are paying rip-off rents are going to have to pay even more. That is the only certainty. There is an alternative. We have set it out over and over again, which is to temporarily ban rent increases, put money back into renters' pockets and deliver the kind of supply that renters need.

Increase investment in social homes and increase investment in genuinely affordable homes. Increase support for the SME builder-developer sector to build homes for working people to buy. The Minister will not do any of those things. Instead, at the behest of the large corporate institutional investors, he is allowing for a market reset and that will do one thing and one thing only. It will mean a small increase in high-density, high-end, high-price private rental, which is not a solution to the crisis. We have set …