I support Social Democrats' amendment, but I also wish to speak to amendments Nos. 9, 11 to 13, inclusive, 37 and 38, all of which are mine. This cluster of amendments does something very similar to the amendment moved by Deputy O'Callaghan, albeit in a slightly more elaborate way. While the first amendment is probably the simplest amendment that I have tabled to this Bill, what it seeks to do is very profound, which is to widen the scope of the protections in this legislation to all tenants in the private rented s…

That is absolutely not the case.

We never said they would be.

The Minister should do some homework.

What is disrespectful is the Minister's decision to bring forward the Bill.

I move amendment No. 9: In page 5, line 32, to delete "in relation to the payment of rent due".

It is not agreed.

I did.

It is not agreed.

I do. The programme for Government promises to improve security and affordability for renters. The Fianna Fáil election manifesto, on which the Minister campaigned vigorously, went further, promising to launch a "new deal for renters". Both documents also committed to reducing homelessness, yet the very first piece of legislation introduced by the Minister is nothing short of an attack on renters. It strips vital protections from the vast majority of tenants at the very time when they most desperately need them. If…

As the Minister will be aware, a significant number of renters have lost income or jobs as a result of Covid-19 restrictions. We are all concerned about the impact of what we are calling the rent arrears debt burden on both tenants and the rental sector overall. Will the Minister outline if he has received the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, research report his Department commissioned on this issue and outline what his plans are to deal with this rent arrears burden?

I thank the Minister for his response. Sinn Féin conducted an online survey of renters recently and more than 1,000 renters replied with a good geographical, age and income spread. While the survey does not claim to be scientifically representative, it gives us an insight. Some 60% of respondents said they had lost income due to Covid-19 and a significant number, almost 70%, believed they would have rent arrears of up to €3,000 after the first three months. A further 13% expected the rent arrears to go up as much a…

I thank the Minister for his constructive reply and I absolutely share his concern about the low level of uptake of the rent supplement. That is because the previous and current Ministers with responsibility for social protection and the Department are not doing enough to promote that payment. I echo the Minister's call for people to avail of it. If one looks at the latest figures from the Department on rent supplements, the average rent supplement payment currently for those 7,000 applicants is €670 per month. In …

As the Minister will announce the detail of his affordable housing scheme in September, I will not ask him to reveal the detail of it. I have a concern that he seems to have two different and competing definitions of what constitutes affordable housing. During the election campaign he correctly called for affordable homes to be delivered at a cost of €250,000 or less, a position shared by Sinn Féin. More recently, he is on the record of the Dáil as saying that setting absolute limits on the price of affordable home…

I thank the Minister. The problem is that there are two ways of addressing this issue. The first is that houses are built and sold at cost price and, in that scenario, the price can be determined at the outset. The alternative is to take a market price at a discount, but that discount must be repaid. That second model is of shared equity, as the Minister has just mentioned. The difficulty is that when that model was used most recently, when Fianna Fáil was most recently in government, it caused problems when the cr…

My concern is that the Minister is evading the question. I am not talking about delivery streams, I am talking about the fundamental principle of what constitutes affordability. There is a universally accepted distinction in the industry between building homes and selling them at the cost of building them, and thereby getting genuine affordability, or allowing the market to dictate a price and the State taking a shared equity portion which must, ultimately, be repaid. The difference is that if the Government opts f…

What the Minister has said is not true. He should read the proposal.

Nor will Sinn Féin.

Which model of delivery is the Government going to pursue?

The Minister is misleading the House.