Get them on tax.

Despite the opposition of People Before Profit and most of the rest of the Opposition and protests last night, the Government insisted on ramming through a Bill relating to the RTB that is going to mean further hikes in rents which are already unaffordable, worsening an already dire housing crisis. The Government rejected amendments which proposed that rents be kept at affordable levels and that no-fault evictions should not continue. In the context of the purpose of the Bill, the Minister stated, "We do not want r…

Factually, the number of landlords has increased in the past two years. They are not leaving the market.

There was 103,000 landlords two years ago and now there are 105,000. There are 2,000 more landlords than there were and more tenancies. So, the Government does not need to enrich them even more at the expense of tenants. What are Michael, Shannon and their two kids supposed to do? Does the Tánaiste think it is acceptable that their two vulnerable children with special needs go into a hostel, which will damage and traumatise them? Shannon was bursting into tears with fear and she is joining the parents of thousands …

We do not object to houses; we object to profiteering.

We object to profiteering, not homes.

We certainly are. They have been told to go to a hostel.

I think you can.

I thank Deputy Gibney for bringing forward this important Bill and Seanadóir Higgins for originally instigating it. I am very happy to support the objectives behind the Bill. As has been said, it is very straightforward that price should not be the only consideration when awarding State contracts. That is a no-brainer, not least because I am dealing with major problems, as I am sure others are. The national children's hospital is the obvious big example, but, at local level, I am dealing with an apartment complex t…

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council received hundreds of calls because of flooding in Newtownsmith, along the DART lines and so on. I thank the council workers, both the indoor council workers and the outdoor teams, who had to go out and respond to this. It highlights the chronic underfunding of our local authorities. Ireland is at the lowest level of funding in the European league table by a mile due to the underfunding of outdoor crews and local authorities generally. For decades, we have identified the problem of flo…

To my mind, there is a direct line between the complicity and collusion of the British state and the British Empire with the genocide we have witnessed in Gaza over the past two years and the atrocities that were carried out by its agents, like Freddie Scappaticci committing murder, abducting people and so on while he was a British agent, through to Bloody Sunday and the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and, if we want to, we can go right back and draw parallels with the role of the Auxiliaries and the Black and Tans …

One of the disadvantages of being a small party is that it is not possible to follow every piece of legislation. However, I did speak against this Bill earlier. I am taking time to speak against it again because it strikes at the heart of a basic principle of justice, which is the right of people to have serious matters that impinge on them judged by a jury of their peers. That is a fundamental basic principle of law. To undermine it, without any real explanation or justification, is extremely worrying. That is wha…

-----mean that some guidance has being given in that area. In any event, I just do not see how replacing juries in the context of making these decisions, even when it comes to the awards people might get if their good name and reputation have been taken, with a single individual, namely a judge, can be a good thing. The only plausible explanation - it would be interesting to know if this is the case - is that those who own the big media outlets want what is being proposed. Let us be honest, sensational comments abo…

I move amendment No. 2: In page 5, between lines 29 and 30, to insert the following: "(2) Within three months of the coming into operation of this act the Minister shall produce a report into the affordability of current rents and establish a board to reset rents to affordable levels, where the guideline for establishing affordability will be rents that are, in general, no more than 20 per cent of a tenant’s income. (3) Within three months of the coming into operation of this act the Minister shall produce a report…

Yes.

I could name a few Ministers before him.

I really am furious at the Minister's comments that this debate is about social media clips. It diminishes the seriousness of what is at stake here. I have been a Member of this House since 2011. I was here two or three months when a circular was produced by the then Department of the environment, within which responsibility for housing was a matter for a Minister of State rather than having a Ministry in its own right. That was because we did not then have the homelessness and housing crisis we have now. The need …

The Minister said, "We do not want rents for long-term tenancies to fall behind market rents".

That means low rents are intolerable; we have to have them higher.

That is in plain English. Just in case there was any doubt about the motive, at the beginning of this year, the Minister, Deputy Lawless, when discussing the Government's thinking, said: ... housing is about international markets. It is actually a spreadsheet in Zurich, New York or Antwerp, more so than a builder looking at a site in Longford or Roscommon, that is actually deciding what happens here. The point is, it should be the builder in Roscommon or Dublin or wherever it is, looking at the land we have that is…