The Bill has been two and a half years in gestation. Considerable work on the legislation and the ideas behind it started a year before the previous Government fell. As I understand it, the working group continued to work on it during the interregnum and modest changes, in my view, have been added by the Government. This means the legislation before us in fact does not represent the profound change in housing policy the Minister claims. It is much more a continuation not only of many of the core principles of Rebui…

I am sharing time with Deputies Quinlivan and Mitchell. In some senses, this is a Bill of two parts. Part of it is very welcome, namely, that relating to the new protections for all tenants, as the Minister outlined. That is included as a result of the strong campaign by the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, and the cross-party Opposition Private Members' Bill on that matter, tabled during Sinn Féin's time, which I will return to in a moment. Nevertheless, as I said on the previous occasion the Minister brought fo…

I move amendment No. 10: In page 5, between lines 2 and 3, to insert the following: ‘‘Amendment of section 19 of Act of 2004 5. Section 19 of the Act of 2004 is amended by the substitution of the following subsection for subsection (4): ‘‘(4) Subject to subsection (5), in setting, at any particular time, the rent under a tenancy of a dwelling in a rent pressure zone, an amount of rent shall not be provided for that is greater than 4 per cent of the rent currently being paid by a sitting tenant or 4 per cent of the …

With the discretion of the Chair, I will speak to amendment No. 13 and I will move it when we reach the section. The purpose of my amendment No. 10 is to deal with the issue we spoke about a moment ago, the 8% increase. The 8% or 12% increase was not an accident or the result of a loophole. The Minister will remember that back in 2016, in the dying hours of that Dáil term, there was a late-night suspension of the consideration of the rent pressure zone legislation because of the complexity of the mathematical formu…

With respect to amendment No. 12, I will pick up a point Deputy Cian O'Callaghan made which I think is quite important. My understanding of the change in terms of an early termination of a tenancy by a tenant with 28 days' notice is that it should deal with the concern the Deputy is raising. If it does not, I would share his concerns about international students who prepay if, for reasons that are not their fault, they have to terminate the rental agreement early and would not get the full refund. I am keen to hear…

I move amendment No. 13: In page 6, between lines 26 and 27, to insert the following: “Amendment of section 4 of Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act 2020 12. Section 4 of the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act 2020 is amended, in subsection 6, by the insertion of the following paragraph: “(d) any other person who, in the view of the Residential Tenancies Board, is at risk of losing their tenancy despite endeavouring to fully comply with the terms of their tenancy agreement and where the termination of that…

I thank the Acting Chairman. Sinn Féin is proud to support fully this legislation to give effect to the 1973 Report of the Committee on the Price of Building Land, the Kenny report. The leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Kelly, rightly reminded us that on three occasions his party has introduced similar legislation. What he forgot to say, of course, is that during that same period of time his party has participated in six separate Governments since the Kenny report was published in 1973. While I am very grateful to…

I was very proud to stand today in full support of the people of Donegal, Sligo, Mayo and Clare, calling for justice. They had many supporters here in Dublin who are also living in defective Celtic tiger-era apartments. Many speakers have rightly noted that these families have been living with defective blocks for eight long years. The expert panel on mica identified 2013 as the date pyritic and mica blocks were first discovered. For eight long years, these families have been living with this scandal. In 2017, the …

In a report published this morning, the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has called on the Government to double public investment in public housing. It has called for investment in the region of €4 billion annually. It states this would deliver 18,000 public homes to meet not just social but affordable housing need for working families. Of course, Sinn Féin has been saying this for years. We have outlined how the Government must double capital expenditure on public housing and embark on the largest inv…

I have to say to the Tánaiste that this is no laughing matter. Fine Gael has been in government for ten years and not a single affordable home to rent or buy has been delivered by any Government scheme. Why is that? It is because its policy is all about big investors and big developers. It is about sweetheart deals for cuckoos and vultures and sweetheart land deals for big developers where 60% of the homes are to be sold at prices of €400,000. That excludes 90% of the population; that excludes working people. For y…

Invest and build in new homes.

It is what the ESRI recommends. Invest and build the homes.

It is not populist nonsense. Is the ESRI report populist nonsense?

In ten years not a single affordable home has been built by the Government. Shame on the Tánaiste.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Burke, for his opening remarks. The failure of the State, both local and central, for decades, if not for generations, to adequately meet the needs of our Traveller community is a scandal. It is probably the worst and most scandalous element of our failing housing system. In every county and constituency there are Traveller-specific sites which can only be described as Dickensian in terms of the conditions adults and children are forced to live in every day. Likewise, the incre…

I am happy to take five minutes to ensure that others get to speak. I thank People Before Profit, Solidarity and Rise for re-tabling this legislation. Sinn Féin was happy to support it in the previous Dáil and we will be enthusiastically supporting it this evening. We tabled a similar Bill in the previous Dáil and have introduced one on First Stage this year as part of our commitment to enshrine a right to housing in the Constitution. We are active supporters of the Home for Good coalition, which has produced the m…

The Green Party has long campaigned for affordable homes. It promised to invest in large-scale affordable housing developments and reuse vacant stock for affordable homes, thereby revitalising our urban centres and tackling climate change. The Green Party continually promotes compact growth and rightly advocates for the 15-minute city. Yet, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and his colleagues are part of a Government that is actively undermining these policies. That Government is allowing big institutional investors…

It is revealing that the Minister did not at any stage say that it is wrong for taxpayers' money to be given to large developers who do not need it to build houses and apartments that will be sold to large institutional investors who will charge working families rip-off rents. That is either right or wrong. I would like to hear the Minister's response in respect of it. The Poolbeg strategic development zone is in the Minister's constituency. This is another example of the failed Government housing policy. Thousands…

On Saturday, thousands of people joined demonstrations in Donegal and Mayo. They called on the Government to deliver a 100% redress scheme for those whose homes have been, and are being, destroyed by defective blocks containing mica and pyrite. This issue, as the Minister knows, also affects homeowners in County Clare. Under the existing scheme, some homeowners are having to pay the cost of up to 50% of the remediation, sometimes hundreds of thousands of euro. This is money the families concerned simply do not have…

I thank the Regional Group for introducing this important motion, which Sinn Féin is more than happy to support enthusiastically. Let me start by saying that the provision of genuinely affordable homes for working people in our towns and villages should be a priority for Government. It is absolutely essential not only for the revitalisation of those towns and villages but also for balanced regional development and, crucially, to tackle the challenge of climate change. For that to happen, we need increased investmen…