I welcome the Minister to the House for the Committee and Remaining Stages of the Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026. I am sure he will allow me to welcome Mary Barron, Helen Fitzgerald, Elaine Hayes, Mary Flynn, Mary Peters, Anne Maher and Anne Marie Farrell who are all in the Distinguished Visitors Gallery, as they should be. It is where all dignitaries are placed. As they are all from Tipperary, they are Tipperary dignitaries. They are all members of the youth club in Tipperary. They are from Clonmel, Cashel, New Inn and south Tipperary in general. I am delighted to welcome our friends from Tipperary to the Distinguished Visitors Gallery. I thank them for visiting Seanad Éireann.

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 5, to delete lines 30 and 31, and in page 6, to delete lines 1 and 2 and substitute the following:

“(2) Within three months of the passing of this Act the Minister shall lay before the Houses of the Oireachtas a report setting out the impact of this Act on rental inflation for student renters in both the private rental sector and the Student Specific Accommodation sector.”.

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 5, to delete lines 30 and 31, and in page 6, to delete lines 1 and 2 and substitute the following:

“(2) Within three months of the passing of this Act the Minister shall lay before the Houses of the Oireachtas a report setting out the impact of the new national rent control provisions contained in section 8 on homelessness and in particular on family homelessness.”.

Amendments Nos. 4 to 6, inclusive, and 8 are related and may be discussed together by agreement. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 5, to delete lines 30 and 31, and in page 6, to delete lines 1 and 2 and substitute the following:

“(2) Within three months of the passing of this Act the Minister shall lay before the Houses of the Oireachtas a multi annual work force plan for the Residential Tenancies Board ensuring they have adequate staff to deal with the increase in disputes arising from the provisions of this Act.”.

Amendment No. 4 is in relation to the Residential Tenancies Board. We know the Residential Tenancies Board already does very important work. It registers tenancies and it provides advice to both landlords and tenants. It provides us with a lot of data on rentals and tenancies. It also settles a lot of disputes or works with disputing sides to try to reach a resolution. This Bill is quite confusing and landlords and tenants are not clear on what the new rules mean for them. There are a lot of different types of tenancies proposed. I predict the Residential Tenancies Board will be even busier than it has been to date. What resources have been put in place to adequately staff the Residential Tenancies Board? We really believe there needs to be a multi-annual workforce plan put in place for the RTB to ensure that it can deal with all the issues we foresee coming down the road.

In relation to this particular amendment, again, I have concerns that there is going to be a huge increase in the number of people seeking to access the services of the RTB. As it is, the numbers applying for adjudication in the RTB are clearly increasing. That is unlikely to dwindle any time soon, especially with the measures in this Bill. Quite a number of people have contacted me with concerns they have about delays in meeting with the RTB and getting adjudication. Is the plan that there will be increased resources allocated to the RTB? Like I said, many people have contacted me in this regard. The RTB is already under pressure.

A lot of people also raise with me concerns that matters affecting Dublin City Council tenants are not able to be adjudicated by the RTB. They have to go through Dublin City Council. In many ways, it is a conflict of interest in terms of the council adjudicating on conditions in local authority flat complexes. It does not make sense for local tenants who put up with dampness and mould and rat infestations. The council is expected to deal with that, but it does not deal with it. It talks to the residents. If a tenant goes in to complain about mould on their wall and their children have some sort of health condition, the council official will come out and give them a cloth and some bleach. It is unfair that they do not have access to the RTB. The RTB would be much more independent than Dublin City Council. It is like the Garda investigating the Garda, or politicians investigating politicians. It never works out well, and it does not work out well for council tenants. The RTB clearly needs to get much more funding. With that funding, it can provide a service for tenants. It is already under pressure. I have had a number of tenants contact me. I know the offices of all my colleagues in the Chamber have been inundated with matters involving tenants, for example, in HAP properties. People have issues with HAP where the landlord has withheld deposits. The RTB deals with a huge variety of issues, and it does not have the funding to deal with them properly. It is important.

The Irish Glass Bottle, IGB, site is obviously a high-end development in which there will eventually be 3,800 new homes, and 350 of them will be social housing, which, of course, will be very welcome to the local community. However, it is only a drop in the ocean compared with what the Ringsend-Irishtown-Pearse Street community need and deserve. There are over 1,000 people on the waiting list for a one-bedroom flat or apartment in area M, which covers Dublin 2, 4 and 6.

It is ridiculous. People are living in crowded accommodation. They cannot afford to rent. When they do rent, they are at the mercy of the landlord and the RTB producing and delivering a service and adjudicating in a fair and balanced way.

I mentioned Pearse Street. Pearse House residents were waiting for regeneration, but stage 2 of a regeneration plan was pulled by the Government. The Government has now said it will do deep retrofitting which will not, of course, increase the size of the flats. People will still be living in tiny boxes. It will not address many of the problems. Raw sewage comes up and there are leaks in the infrastructure in Pearse House. The tenants were devastated when the regeneration programme was pulled. They have asked to meet the Minister. It is disappointing that he would not meet them. He should meet them. It is only fair that he does so.

I ask the Senator to speak to the amendments.

We need a commitment to invest in the RTB in light of what will happen in the coming months and years. Clearly, rents are going to go up. As I said yesterday, the Government is telling renters that it will reduce rents by allowing landlords to increase them. That is what Lorcan Sirr said, not me and not Sinn Féin. He is not a political representative. He is independent and evidence-based. That is really important to acknowledge. It is not Sinn Féin or the Opposition that has said this; an independent academic has said the Government is telling people it will reduce rents by allowing landlords to put up rents. That sums up this Bill. It is allowing one law for the wealthy, vulture funds, institutional investors and CEOs of Irish institutional property companies who have free access to these Houses. This is not my first time saying this. The Government has been taken hostage by the vulture funds and large investors. This Bill is another example of that. The Minister might comment on whether he will invest and increase funding for the RTB.

I will be brief. The amendment is sensible and would provide more staff to the RTB for when this potential disaster hits. When many immigrants came into the country, the International Protection Office was understaffed and could not keep up with the number of applications. We saw what that did. People were giving out and protesting on the streets. There is no protection for renters in the Bill. As I said yesterday, the entire Bill needs to be dumped.

I ask the Minister to at least accept the amendment and have staff in place to help residents when they need to go to the RTB and ensure they will not wait for months or years for a case to be examined. At least put that small amount of protection into the Bill. Consider what would happen if I entered a new tenancy agreement after 1 March for a house that had been built 60 years ago, which had dampness and was not A or B rated. If Senator Tully rented a house that was brand new and we both paid the same rent, I would go to the RTB about it. I do not see why I should have to live in something that may potentially have mould or dampness and pay the exact same rent as somebody down the road just because we both took out leases after 1 March.

The RTB will be filled with complaints. Let us pre-empt that. We have developed flood defences systems in this country to pre-empt a flood. There could be the could be a flood of cases to the RTB. It is a very simple amendment which the Minister could accept to show that he might be in favour of helping these renters in one way or another.

On a point of order, are we not here to discuss the current legislation as opposed to the Opposition's-----

We are talking about the Bill the Minister has brought forward, which will cause many more problems and hike up the price of rent. Can the Minister tell people that it will not hike up the price of rent? No, he cannot. He deflects. Sinn Féin is not in power; the Minister is in power.

People will be allowed to come in. I will let the Minister finish.

Will the Minister actually talk about the Bill and stop deflecting?

I am talking about the Bill.

The Minister is talking about everything but the Bill.

The Minister, without interruption. Everyone will be allowed to come back in.

We have to deliver supply. This tactic of shouting a Minister down whenever he or she says something that people do not like really shows the shallowness of what those people either have or do not have to offer in relation it.

On a point of order, I was asked to stick to my point. It was stated that I had deviated. The Minister is doing exactly that. He is deviating from the Bill. He is talking about Sinn Féin and policy.

If Senators want to come back in, I ask them-----

The same rules that apply to me should apply to the Minister . That is not happening.

I ask everyone to stick to the rules.

That is fair enough, but Senator Andrews talked about social housing and local government coming in under the RTB, which is not covered by the Bill.

And I was told not to.

It is not part of the Bill, and I felt I had to address it.

Now the Minister is distracting.

I listened to a lot of invective and I have to respond to it. In fairness, I have to be given that opportunity. I am happy to listen to the responses of the Senators.

What the Minister is saying is so insulting. There is more to the Opposition than Sinn Féin. As a party, we have tabled 69 amendments to the Bill. The Minister is saying that we are not providing any constructive criticism. The Labour Party has been in government. We have a very good track record of building houses in this country. I cannot say the same, unfortunately, about Fianna Fáil, particularly if the Minister wants to go down the route of talking about the building of social housing being halted.

The Minister referred to the Residential Tenancies Board as if it is big to brag that there has been a 70% increase there. It was coming from a really low base. The Residential Tenancies Act has been amended more than 14 times. That is once every 18 months. There is talk about housing tsars. The Minister is saying that those in opposition are not being constructive and that he is accountable. If he is going to be accountable, why would he not accept the amendment tabled by my colleague Deputy Sheehan to insert a provision whereby the Minister would be required, within two years, to conduct a review into the operation of the effectiveness of the amendments made in the Bill, with the findings and conclusions to be laid before the House in the interests of accountability. As an elected representative, I cannot keep up with the changes that are happening to the Bill all of the time.

The Minister spoke about the role of councillors. He is blaming officials in local government. I worked as a councillor. The main issue is with representations from people getting notices to quit. Maybe the Minister should think about funding local authorities in the context of housing stock they have. They are not able to keep up with the repairs because they have no staff. There is deliberate underfunding of local government, particularly in the context of housing repairs. This has come up over and over again. I send representations to my local county council in Sligo. It is not able to keep up with maintaining the housing stock it has. It is so disingenuous of the Minister to blame officials in county councils for this and to say that they need to be held accountable for it.

They do.

They certainly do, but local authorities need to employ more staff and funding that comes within the gift of the Minister.

The Minister used the term "soundbites". I sometimes wonder about that. We speak to people all the time who have serious concerns about the impact this will have on them. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, was in the House yesterday. He mentioned that Threshold and various other organisations were consulted with regard to the Bill. I want to make it clear that I am here because I am concerned about the very real impact this will have on people who are not able to afford to pay their rent.

Threshold is concerned that the option for landlords to set market rates between tenancies may result in an unintended consequence whereby renters, particularly those who move home, will end up paying high rents within three to four years and will see their overall rent security undermined. We are not aware of any modelling done to determine the impact that this change could have on the market rent levels. Because the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, mentioned it yesterday, I assume that the Minister's response will be the same with regard to when exactly he thinks these changes will happen. What is the timeframe for when we will see rent decrease? What we are seeing are mechanisms to increase rents. It is very hard for us to understand the Minister's arguments on the idea that rents will somehow be reduced when the Bill allows for them to be increased. The Minister's response will be about supply and when we will see the critical mass of that supply. He can come back to me if that is not his response. The problem is that this is premised on the notion that an increased number of properties will lead to market-driven rent reductions. That has never happened. The market increases the cost of rent and does not decrease it.

The Minister spoke about the Opposition having no solutions. He will have heard from my colleague Deputy Rory Hearne at length. We do provide solutions. The State building affordable rental properties is a major example. Relying entirely on the market has not worked up to this point. The definition of idiocy is doing something again and again and expecting a different outcome. I would love to know a timeframe for when exactly the Minister thinks rent will be reduced, and not a response with regard to having supply or a critical mass in respect of supply.

The Minister spoke about the average rental tenancy of three and half years. We are all aware of that. He hopes the Bill will increase the average. The problem is that it is three and a half years as opposed to it just being a case of people getting kicked out by their landlords after that length of time. People's lives change and they move. I particularly want to make a point about students who move every year. Each year they will be faced with increased rents.

The Bill does not define what rent is. That might sound like a stupid statement to make but there is an issue here, particularly in the context of students. Serviced apartments come with many ancillary costs. Some serviced apartments might come with an added cost relating to a car parking space. For some people, that is not optional. Even if they do not have a car, they must pay it anyway. There might be service charges for the use of utilities or common spaces. In DCU, there was a 120% increase in monthly service charge costs, from €57 to €117, which is phenomenal.

The Minister, Deputy Lawless, was quoted last September in The Irish Times voicing great concerns about this. He said that in this case DCU was not acting within the spirit of the law. He said he would discuss it with the Minister, Deputy Browne. I would love to know if that discussion has taken place because I do not see any protections in this legislation for students or anyone else in a serviced apartment because of this idea of what rent is. That is a way to have increases. The legislation says that within six years the rent cannot increase but the service charge could increase. That could be a way for the landlord to squeeze people and get more money from them. This is a serious issue for many people. A DCU student contacted me, stating as follows:

I have very little left to cover basic necessities such as food, clothing, and other everyday expenses. As a result, I regularly rely on free volunteer services, such as Olio and similar platforms [Olio, for those who do not know it, provides free food] to receive some food for free. The DCU Pantry services, providing free breakfasts and weekly food packages, are also extremely helpful - thank you very much for these initiatives, they truly make a difference.

Even with these wonderful free services, maintaining daily life remains stressful and requires strict budgeting on my part. For example, I cannot afford to use most paid services and even have to save on transportation costs, such as bus fares...

This person says they prefer to walk. They cannot afford a bus fare because of the cost of their accommodation. Yesterday I quoted someone whose parents are paying for their rent, as many parents do. The parents are actually spending more on their child's rent than they are on their monthly mortgage. We talk about the squeezed middle. Could you get a better example of that? They are paying twice their monthly mortgage payment to support their child and God help them if they have two children in education at the same time.

This all points to our sincere and deep concerns. I am not trying to peddle misery here. I am hearing feedback from groups like Threshold of their deep concern that this Bill is not going to have the intended consequences. I believe the Minister sincerely thinks that it will. I also believe that the Bill is not going to have the impact he thinks it will. That is why we here and that is why I am making these cases to the Minister. It is not because I am trying to get some great clip for social media. By the way, accountability and showing what I do on social media is also perfectly fine because that is how one reaches people, especially younger people. That is okay. I am pleading with the Minister to explore some of our amendments. I do not believe he will because that has not been the modus operandi up to this point. I am not doing it for any reason other than to represent the people who want me to tell their stories. These are people who are fearful about what this means for them because they are struggling.

I spoke last week to the Minister about survivors of domestic violence, for example. They have to leave whenever they have to leave. They will have to move to new tenancies. There is no six-month- or three-and-a-half-year period. If they have to flee, they have to flee. I do not see provisions and protections for them in this Bill. People leave and they have to travel for all sorts of different reasons. If a husband or wife gets a job in a new city or in a new part of the country, they have to leave. I understand the motivation for having protection for six years. That is noble but it does not reflect the reality that people move for a plethora of reasons. When they do, properties will be set to market rents and that is going to have devastating consequences for these people who are already struggling to keep their heads above water.

Look at people with living with disabilities. We were criticised for using the phrase, "choosing between heating and eating", which was absurd because that is actually what disability rights activists and groups are telling us. They will be impacted by this. There are lots of people in that space who are renting and who will have to move for a range of reasons. This idea that people are static and do not move around and do not move between tenancies because of necessity is not living in reality. This Bill does not reflect the reality of people's lives and that is driving my concerns about it.

The Minister mentioned that there was or there will be a 30% increase in apartments. Is that correct?

It was 38.7% in 2025.

Is that an increase in apartments over the last year or there will be an increase?

There was in 2025.

The vast majority of those apartments will be in and around the urban centres, such as Dublin. I cannot imagine there will be too many apartments built in west Limerick or in Cavan. Most of that supply will be in Dublin. I think that is a fair comment. The difficulty with all those apartments in that 38.7% increase is that they are not affordable for ordinary people living on Pearse Street or in Ringsend, or even young families in Sandymount. They cannot afford to have their children rent those places. There will be from 3,500 to 3,800 homes built on the Irish Glass Bottle site, of which 350 will be social and 550 affordable, with the rest at market rates. In fact, it is questionable how affordable the affordable apartments on the Irish Glass Bottle site will be and whether ordinary working families will be able to afford them. Low- and middle-income families will certainly not be able to afford them. There was a two-bedroom apartment on the Shore Club, right next door to the Irish Glass Bottle site, on sale for almost €1 million, which is insane. A one-bedroom apartment was almost €700,000. Those apartments are not affordable to those on ordinary incomes or families living in places like Pearse Street, Ringsend and Kevin Street, in the south inner city and the north inner city. Many of those people made their homes in Ringsend and stayed in the inner city when it was not a popular choice. The area around the docklands was derelict for so long but it has become fashionable now. The local community are being told that they are not welcome, basically, and it is Government policy that is deciding that. It is pricing ordinary families out of the housing market. In Ringsend, Pearse Street and Kevin Street and right across inner city Dublin, they cannot afford to pay.

I went to the Irish Glass Bottle site a few weeks ago and viewed a one-bedroom apartment. It was nothing to write home about. Pretty ordinary, I would say. It is obviously nice, new, bright and clean. There is a small indoor cinema that people can hire and bring their friends to and there is a gym for exercise. However, the reality is that the cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment there is €2,500 a month. My understanding is that it would require the salary of two Senators to afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment on the Irish Glass Bottle site, and Senator's salaries are not too shabby. The salary of one Senator would not be enough to rent a one-bedroom on the Irish Glass Bottle site. For me, that is insane.

Families who have been living and working in the community for generations were on the front line during the Covid pandemic. They were servicing the hospitals and the food centres. They were doing front-line work and delivering services to ensure that everybody else was able to get on with life. Their incomes or those of their children are nowhere near enough. As a result, they are destined to live in overcrowded housing for decades. The 350 public social housing units that I hope Dublin City Council will get on the site will be a drop in the ocean.

It will not have any significant impact for families living in Kevin Street, Ringsend and the inner city. What we need is affordability. It is all very well saying 38.7% of new apartments but the vast majority of them are not affordable, certainly not in this area and certainly not in the inner city. I see the flats just off Pearse Street in Markievicz House. There are families in Pearse House, which is the regeneration scheme the Government pulled and now sounds like it is trying to blame the council for doing it because it said the council should be responsible, and it is responsible and has been looking for solutions, but the council cannot do it on its own and the Government knows that. The council needs funding from the central Exchequer to regenerate Pearse House, and the Government is not willing to step up to the plate and ensure families in Pearse House, Markievicz House, Conway Court and Macken Villas have decent sized accommodation. They have been let down. Those families will be living in overcrowded conditions for generations more because, given the rent they are expected to pay, they cannot afford to rent so they will live at home because there is not the social housing. On middle incomes, they cannot afford to rent accommodation on the Irish Glass Bottle site, somewhere that was an intrinsic part of the maritime working class community that is Ringsend. That is being gentrified and this Government is pushing ahead with the gentrification of the inner city. Many young people cannot afford to even have a family because they cannot move out of home and cannot afford a one-bedroom flat or apartment. Where will they go? They will be stuck with their parents in increasingly overcrowded conditions.

Many families are caught because they cannot get onto the Dublin City Council housing list due to their income as they are working. They are doing everything right and are important pillars and parts of the community. They are working as electricians, gardaí or whatever and they cannot get on the housing list and cannot afford to rent in this community. Gardaí and teachers cannot afford to move into the Irish Glass Bottle site. We will not see teachers living in a one-bedroom apartment in the Irish Glass Bottle site because they cannot afford the prices.

When the Government is slapping itself on the back and telling us there is a great increase in the number of apartments, that is all very well if you are part of the top tier of Irish society. That is the way it seems to be. You are either in the top tier and the Government will back you - the Government will support Irish institutional property companies and investment funds - or you are just stuck in Pearse House expected to put up with whatever the Government thinks you deserve. The Government does not think the residents in Pearse House, Markievicz House, Beech Hill and Rathmines Avenue deserve very much because the conditions they are expected to live in are absolutely horrendous.

It should be noted that at the Kevin Street site, there are plans to vacate the Civic Offices and then build on-----

Are we having a free-for-all or having amendments?

I can read out the amendments. This relates to reviews of the working of the Act.

It is just to-----

I am allowing latitude but there are Members-----

There has been a lot of latitude-----

All right.

I will read out the amendment: "Within three months of the passing of this Act-----"

If they get any more latitude they will say they are not objecting to all of this.

I know. I am trying to give a small bit of latitude but it is amendments Nos. 4 to 6, inclusive, and amendment No. 8, which relate to reviews of the Act. Where it is relevant, people can bring up the examples, but I ask people to speak to the amendments.

I have a lot of examples.

This is about reviewing the workings of the Act.

What about the examples of the accommodation in Cabra? Did the Senator give that example?

Members, people can use examples where appropriate.

Give us a bit of detail of the objection against student accommodation in Cabra the Senator's party leader submitted. Give us the details on that.

All right. Please, can we-----

Can we discuss the Bill?

Yes.

He wants to give examples. I would hear his logic for objecting to student accommodation.

We discuss our party policies on housing every day, given the time.

I will clarify, we are on amendments Nos. 4 to 6, inclusive, and amendment No. 8 and they relate, predominantly, to the workings of the Act and reviews thereof and to put in a review mechanism of the Act within two years. That is what we are speaking about and I ask Members to speak to those amendments. Anois, Senator Andrews is in possession.

I would like to speak.

I appreciate the latitude and that was given also to the Minister when he was speaking, so I appreciate that.

When people say things, people are entitled to respond.

Yes.

I am trying to be fair to all sides. The Minister is entitled to respond. The Senator is entitled to respond to the Minister, but if we do that, no one will speak to any amendment. We will just be responding to the previous response.

Like that, I want to take that opportunity, as the Cathaoirleach has offered, to respond. I am responding to the Minister.

I ask people to respond and then speak to the amendment.

Yes, all right. In regard to the RTB, the Minister said there is significant funding but the RTB was set up by a Fianna Fáil Government. Yet the Minister claimed Sinn Féin was looking to divest powers from councillors to organisations like the RTB. That is a bit ironic given that the Minister's Department set it up so I am not sure how he can blame Sinn Féin for divesting power to the RTB when Sinn Féin has not been in government. We did not set up the RTB, so I wanted to clarify that.

The Minister mentioned security of tenure and how important it is. Everybody agrees that it is important. It is so important we have security of tenure, but this will not give any huge comfort to tenants who cannot afford the rent because of a lack of affordability. People with disabilities are €1,400 down after the previous budget, so where will they find it? Where will an individual working and living with a disability and in accommodation find the extra money that rents will increase by? Such people are already down, so it will increasingly put pressure on people with disabilities. It is inevitable that individuals with disabilities will find themselves before the RTB. The numbers of people in front of the RTB will clearly increase. I made a few comments there.

Senator Cosgrove mentioned funding and the Minister said local authorities have to address the issues themselves and not keep looking for more and more money. Unfortunately, the council does not have the funding it needs. It is now raising the rents. This is thanks to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors who are putting up rents at a time when people cannot afford it. The cost of living is going through the roof so it is very difficult for everybody.

I am disappointed that the amendments are not being accepted. I felt that the one I proposed was simple. I thought it was an essential addition to the Bill that within two years of the commencement of the Act, the Minister would publish a report examining the impact on the rental market, and that the report would then be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas. I did not think it was a radical request. The Minister knows that I do not want to be obstructive but I just thought it was good governance. When we pass legislation that affects hundreds of thousands of tenants and landlords and when we intervene in a market that is already under enormous strain we have a responsibility to ensure that our actions have the intended effect. That is basically what I want to do there.

We have been here before. Yesterday, the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, said we need a reset and a fix. That is why I think a few things need to be done in order for this to be a fix. We have already been here before. We introduced layer upon layer of legislation in the rental sector and it has not worked. Some of it has been necessary and was overdue and it has been well intentioned but a lot of it was poorly evaluated. What we have not done in any meaningful or systematic way is to look back and then ask if it worked, if it helped and if it made things better or worse.

If we look at the number of people in emergency accommodation – 17,000 people – we can see we are going in the right direction. The homeless figure is shocking in itself but it does not capture the full reality. There are thousands more people whom we call the hidden homeless, that is, people who couch-surf or stay with family and move into spare rooms, who never appear in the monthly statistics. They are not counted, but they are living with the same insecurity as anybody that is a statistic who has been mentioned, and they are living with the same fear and exhaustion.

Alongside that, we have a rental market that all of us agree is dysfunctional. As Senator Andrews said, the rents are at an historic high and supply is at an historic low. My main business is transport. Recently I was moving an economist who was living in Spencer Dock back to Brussels because, although he was on a six-figure salary, the rent over here was far too expensive. The rent for his one-bedroom apartment in Spencer Dock – I am not talking about Mayfair in London – was €3,800 per month. It is not achievable.

Landlords are also leaving the market faster than new ones are entering. Tenants are competing. The Minister has seen on social media long queues of people looking at houses to rent. Families are being priced out of communities. I accept the Minister is trying to fix all of this, and it is a difficult fix. There was evidence yesterday that young people are staying at home longer. When I was growing up we left home at 17 or 18. Now people are living at home in their 30s. Young people are delaying milestones. They are delaying education, children, etc., because they cannot secure stable housing. Of course the Minister knows all that.

We cannot keep legislating in the dark. We cannot keep passing Bills without building mechanisms to assess their impact. That is why my amendments matter. Last week I was before the housing committee and the Department was present. We have changed the population threshold in towns, for example, for short-term letting from 10,000 to 20,000. Towns with 10,000 were exempt but now towns of 20,000 are. When I asked the Department how many houses would be released in towns with 10,000, I was told approximately 12,000. Then I asked how many houses would be released into the long-term rental market now that the threshold has been increased to 20,000 and I was told in or around 12,000. I am worried about the assessments. What is the mathematics behind it if it does not make a difference? Has it been well-thought out? The same goes for this Bill.

What my amendment did was to ask for a pause two years from now, just to honestly look back and see whether the Bill has improved the situation for tenants, stabilised the market or encouraged supply, because I know that is what the Minister wants, or if it has inadvertently pushed more landlords to exit the market. We must also find out whether it has helped to reduce the homeless numbers. That is the measurable effect that I was looking for. They are not political questions, they are practical ones.

The Minister knows that I am not only a Senator but I have spent the last 20 years working with people who have experienced homelessness. When I was younger I started to volunteer in the Cedar House Homeless Hostel just off O'Connell Street. They did fantastic work there. It was run by the Salvation Army and now it is Crosscare. I used to volunteer every Sunday. I realised that there are a lot of people in trouble with addiction and mental health who are homeless and who need supported housing. I have expressed that in here before. I bought a bus and converted it to a restaurant. I used to go out every night under Clerys clock, Monday to Thursday. I met the most amazing people. Now that service, which used to feed about 60, is feeding up to 500 a day, and we have it at The Lighthouse on Pearse Street.

We meet people who basically have slipped through the crack of the system. What I noticed in the last while is that the demographics have changed. Now we have people who are working. Last week I had a guy in who is actually working in the construction industry and, unfortunately, he cannot afford the rent so he is living in Sandymount in a tent. He comes in to us because we provide a barber and a doctor. We also provide live musical bingo, something to just take people's mind off the very fact that they are experiencing homelessness. The demographics have changed. People like him, who once had a stable tenancy and a stable life now find themselves in a difficult position, without a place to call home. I meet them every night of the week. I would love if the Minister could come down there with me one evening. When you look into the eyes of the people who come in you realise that these guys have lost a lot, and then you start to think about housing policy. This is not an abstract debate. There is human cost here. You see that in the queue outside The Lighthouse. Every decision we make here and every unintended consequence of legislation needs to be properly reviewed.

That is why I brought the amendment. It was in good faith. It was not to score political points and it was not to slow down the Minister making progress in this area, but to ensure that we learn from what we do and we are held accountable. If the enacted Bill is successful, the review I propose would show that. If it needs adjustment, then the review would give evidence to look back and say where we need to tweak it a bit. If the Bill has unintended consequences then the Minister would know early enough in two years. I urge the Minister to reconsider. He has looked at the amendment. I think it would strengthen the Bill. I want to add to the solution. I want to provide solutions. I do not want to just come against it for the sake of it. I do feel that my amendment was fair.

I want to rise and speak in favour of all four amendments. I am surprised the Minister is not accepting at least one of them. First, I will deal with the amendment that relates to the Residential Tenancies Board and its capacity and resources. To my mind, that is a no-brainer. It is obvious.

There is also an amendment looking for a review of the Act, and the impact it is having. Senator McCarthy's amendment seeks to review the Act within two years. These are very reasonable requests. I have been in this House since 2016. I worked in civil society before that for 15 years. Frankly, the parties of Government have had such a long record of getting things wrong in this area that there should be no hubris here. There should be a level of humility that says we are willing to engage and we want to review the legislation. Senator Cosgrove said the Residential Tenancies Act is getting changed every 18 months. I have seen a litany of bad ideas and poorly thought-through ideas in which there was constructive engagement from the Opposition and civil society, economic experts and others, signalling the potential problems, and an unwillingness to take that on board.

I could go through them but the list would be too long. In terms of the question of review, it is relevant to mention a couple of them. The local authorities were being blamed by the Minister. However, they were effectively forced to enter into ten- and 20-year leases during the recession, paying €20,000 a year to rent houses for ten and 20 years which they could have bought for €200,000 and which would then have become part of our public housing stock. During that time, the seven-year capital gains tax exemption was definitely used to inflate property prices, quite successfully, during a period of recession, rather than risk letting property prices fall. In 2017, my group brought in legislation asking for proper measures to tackle vacant housing and vacant properties. It was dragged kicking and screaming to a point where now there are some grants and a vacancy tax which is not enforced. This is very relevant because, looking at the increases in vacancy, it is not effective or enforced to the degree it should be. That is relevant to a point made by Senator Andrews earlier. I live in the city centre and I see the empty apartments there which are part of investor portfolios. That gives the lie to the narrative that when these apartments are built they will automatically address the housing and homelessness crisis. In many cases, having those properties lie vacant as part of a portfolio with a theoretical rent of €3,000 a month is actually worth more because they can be sold on repeatedly. There is no need to rent them. We know that happens, particularly in Dublin and the city centre.

In regard to the strategic housing development system, we pushed for use it or lose it clauses to be attached at that time. Instead, there was fast-track planning permission which led to very poor decisions, many of which were rightly challenged. They were poorly made decisions. We talk about the challenges. Many of those happened only when strategic housing developments were happening because they were done in such a poor way. You do not lose 80% of your cases because people do not like the development. It happened because the process was poorly done in many cases. Some 40% of those planning permissions were never commenced, never built, because that use it or lose it clause for which the Opposition asked was not put into the legislation. These people got the planning permission and are allowed to build but they have not gone ahead to build.

That type of scheme was then abandoned and pushed to the past. There was then the suspension of the EU fiscal rules which we were told were the reason we could not invest massively in public housing for years. We were told the EU fiscal rules would not allow it. However, those rules were suspended for a period. I spent three to four years pleading with then Minister, Paschal Donohoe, to let us start using that moment of opportunity, when Ireland had a massive surplus and the EU was not restricting us, to invest heavily in public building. However, we did not do that. That decision was framed as prudent but I do not believe it was. It was a moment when very low interest rates of less than 0% were available to Ireland. Anything we spent then was at 0% interest. There were no restrictions and we had the resources.

Moving along, there is case after case on the residential tenancies - issues we pointed to, inadvertent consequences, the loans that went out and drove up the prices when the economic forecast told us they would drive the prices up and that is what happened. There is a fundamental misapprehension that is never challenged, a core wrong starting assumption that we see repeatedly, which is that what the market wants, what shareholders and investors want and what the public needs are aligned. However, they are not necessarily aligned. Investors are entitled to seek profit. That, however, does not care about delivering the public need, which is a secure housing stock, a security of homes that would allow people to plan and live, rent or buy in a way that is secure. They have different goals. Scarcity drives up prices and that benefits shareholders. There is a constant narrative that if we give developers and others what they want and make sure restrictions are not too restrictive, they will somehow magically build or rent a great many houses at a reasonable price. Why would they? That is where the State needs to be coming in with policies and measures that deliver for the public because that is who the State works for. By all means allow the market to prosper but not simply appease or plead with the market to maybe deliver.

We have here another set of measures about which people who are more expert on the rental sector than I am, such as Threshold and many others, are flagging problems. They are pointing to the risk of massive spikes in rent. They are pointing to the risk of persons who are forced to move for whatever reasons being in a situation where their rent may be greatly hiked. They are pointing to the dangers of the many notices to quit that we know have come before them. They are flagging reasonable concerns. For the Government to state that it does not even want to agree to a review is unacceptable. This is not about bashing the Government; this is about years of hearing constructive ideas, not just from me but from everybody, even Government backbenchers sometimes, which are not listened to, and then the problem happens.

While we have not been seeing the construction of housing, what have seen over the past decade is the construction of ever more elaborate excuses. I have seen the excuses moving through, such as, "It is all down to planning objections." We know it is not about planning objections. Look at the figures. Half of the judicial reviews are taken by developers. Most of them were against SHDs, vast numbers of which had planning permission that was not used. Another excuse is to blame local authorities whose hands were tied on housing delivery for many years and whose powers have been chipped away in successive Bills coming through these Houses. The local authorities should absolutely be doing more. They should, for example, be getting that vacant property tax into their own coffers. That would incentivise delivery. The latest excuse frames gold-plated standards for things like basic fire safety as the big issue, decent standards which lead to apartment living being a liveable option for people, as it is in many European countries where there are housing standards. Instead, we have seen the lowering of standards. Every time the standards were lowered it led not to more housing but, rather, to developers reapplying for planning permission in order to cram in more units, which actually delayed delivery. That is one more example of the inadvertent consequences of policies formed without listening to well-flagged concerns.

If the Minister will not accept the well-flagged concerns in terms of the amendments to the substance of the Bill, the very minimum would be to accept amendments on a review in order that, rather than in two years' time looking at the excuses for why it did not work and all of us speculating in that regard, we will have some form of independent assessment of what went wrong and what could have been done better such that maybe we will be able to learn from things this time. The Government should not brainstorm another idea and yet again ram it through without proper consideration of the consequences. This is a genuine appeal to the Minister to accept one of these amendments on the question of review and impact.

I will come in later on the question of the downward and upward rents, because I believe there is an issue in section 8 and others in regard to that question. The Minister said rents may go down because of market supply. I do not believe market supply will necessarily drive rents down. What might drive rents down is a large-scale global economic recession, which is being forecast as a possibility. I do not believe the Bill is very well designed in terms of its rent calculators to allow for that to be reflected. If such a circumstance occurred that led to downward pressure, I worry that we would end up trapped in the same way as we were trapped in the ten-year leases at unrealistic prices, where councils were paying for properties that they could have bought for a fraction of the cost.

Indeed, we all recall the upward-only rent review scandals of the previous years. I say this having had the unfortunate experience of going through two recessions in my time, both the dot-com recession and the 2008 collapse.

I urge the Minister to accept one of these amendments in respect of review and show there is a level of learning, understanding and willingness to engage with the fact that when people raise flags it is not just to wave a banner or to use as a stick to beat the Government. Maybe it is because they have some genuine concerns the Government should be listening to. Maybe the Minister should be trying to learn better so we do not make mistakes. I do not see an acknowledgement of or learning from those mistakes of the past. I say that with absolute sadness because I want this issue fixed. I will be very happy if this Government manages to fix it but unless there is a level of genuine engagement and recognition of some of the assumptions that have not worked out in the past, I do not see that happening.

It is almost as if the Opposition come through an evangelical door on the far side of the Chamber because what they do outside and what they say inside the Chamber are completely different.

In response to Senator Higgins, we now have the most regulated construction market, arguably, in the world. Since 2019, the standards of construction in Ireland have been beyond reproach. Certainly, there were mistakes made in the past in terms of apartment defects but solid steps and legislation put in place by the Government have ensured that is now the case. No government in Europe has taken such a sustained and unrelenting approach to trying to address the housing challenge as the current Government. There has been a suite of measures.

Several Senators mentioned vacancy. We have brought more than 3,000 homes back into the stock, as a result of the advent of the croí cónaithe housing scheme. That has been further adapted to include over-the-shop units. This will be particularly attractive in Dublin, where a large problem remains.

There is a certain irony in the Sinn Féin Senator speaking glowingly of the bottle bank site.

The Senator should get the name right. It is the glass bottle site.

Senator Flaherty, without interruption.

It is the glass bottle site. My apologies. It is an ambitious site with 3,000 units and Senator Andrews bemoaned the fact that more than 500 of them will be affordable housing and 300 of them will be social housing. If Sinn Féin had not objected to 12,000 houses in Dublin over five years, imagine how many more social and affordable housing units we could have had. Equally, many Senators extolled the virtues of student accommodation and berated the Government for not delivering more social housing. Yet, I see that Sinn Féin's iconic party leader, in tandem with Deputy Marie Sherlock, has objected to a student accommodation development in Cabra. Sinn Féin Senators cited several examples earlier. If they could speak to that-----

On a point of order-----

They have had free rein.

The Senator should stick to the amendments.

Yes, talk about your amendments, Senator.

That goes for all Senators.

I have to take particular issue with the Senator who is not happy with apartment building, which has seen a 33% increase. That they are not being built in Cavan is now the problem. When they are being built, Sinn Féin does not like to see them.

Is Senator Flaherty talking to me?

No, the Senator behind Senator Tully. Sinn Féin does not like when houses are being built and it has done everything possible to stop building.

Senator Cosgrove referenced Labour Party Ministers' time in housing. In the last ten years, we have built 260,000 houses in this country.

Senator Flaherty, will you-----

I am almost finished.

-----try to speak to the amendments, please?

That is the equivalent of rebuilding Cork, Limerick and Galway. The last Labour Party Minister for housing was Deputy Alan Kelly, probably the best leader of that party which unceremoniously dumped him, and he delivered 75 social houses in 2015.

Absolutely not. Who caused the housing crash? Who crashed the economy?

Order, please.

Labour's track record in housing was 75 houses in 2015, so it should not lecture us on housing.

Who caused the housing crash? Who gave the brown envelopes to Bertie Ahern? Who did that?

Do not lecture us on housing. Go back to 2015.

Of course, we can lecture you on housing.

You cannot lecture us.

Who handed over the brown envelopes to developers?

We can see Sinn Féin's performance in Northern Ireland.

The Senator is just trying to divert again.

I call Senator Andrews.

Can I speak first?

Senator Andrews indicated. Does Senator McCormack want to speak as well?

Yes.

We are discussing housing. We are clear, as were the previous speakers, that we are all committed. The Minister has just acknowledged, and Senator Stephenson has just said, that we do not doubt the Minister's belief that he is going to make positive changes. We do not disagree with the Minister's beliefs or doubt his integrity. We disagree with this Bill. We have outlined clearly yesterday and today why the decision not to accept these amendments is going to make the Bill worse.

To clarify, I did not bemoan the lack of apartments on the glass bottle site. I bemoaned the fact that they are not going to be affordable for ordinary working families across the inner city. They are completely unaffordable. On the suggestion that we are giving out about housing on the glass bottle site, I was part of a campaign for a long time-----

The Senator spent two days giving out. Everything is wrong with the site, according to him. He must have looked at every one of those apartments because he is down viewing them the whole time.

Senator Flaherty, please.

I would if I could afford to, but because of Fianna Fáil and Government policies, I cannot afford it.

Excuse me. I ask Senators to address the amendments. There must be no interruptions from either side.

They are there because of Fianna Fáil-----

Senator Flaherty, please.

There would be 12,000 more there if they would let us at it.

I was not critical of the units. I was critical of the cost of the units on the glass bottle site. Rents there are between €2,500 and €3,500 per month. Senator McCarthy mentioned Spencer Dock where someone he knows was paying over €3,500 for a one-bedroom apartment. How is that affordable for any working family or anybody in the inner city who worked on the front line during the pandemic, ensuring society continued? None of the families living in Pearse House, Countess Markievicz House, Whelan House or O'Rahilly House in Ringsend can afford those rents. They cannot afford to pay the rents that are being expected and charged on the glass bottle site. They are being excluded from their own community, and that is fundamentally wrong. It shows there is a two-tier society being created and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are creating and pushing ahead with increasing the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

This is Senator Aubrey McCarthy's amendment, not a Sinn Féin or Labour Party amendment. The Senator is an Independent and his amendment states:

Within two years of commencement of this Act, the Minister shall publish a report examining the impact of this Act has on the rental market. The report shall be laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas.

That seems reasonable. How can anyone find fault with that? It is not unreasonable to expect a review. The other amendments are the same. How could anybody find fault with a review? The Government wants to just plough ahead making mistake after mistake without reviewing anything. That is the modus operandi of the Government - plough along, continue making mistakes and do not take on any good ideas that Independent Senators have.

This amendment is not unreasonable. I am curious as to why the Minister would not accept it because, as Senator McCarthy said, we have to know how policies being put in place now impact residents in the future. I can tell the Minister that residents in my constituency and across the country are very fearful about what is going to happen. To give an example, rents in Galway, which are currently €1,302 a month, will soar to €4,020 per month.

This is based on an average RTB figure as it is weighted, so it is more accurate than a simple average of the other figures in that graph.

A proposal like this is not unreasonable. If you are in the private sector, reviews are always done. We should be supporting this amendment and I do not understand the logic for not accepting it.

I am going to speak about a number of amendments put forward. I am going to choose to ignore the deflection from the other side. I want to ask specific questions on the amendment. To be fair, the Minister has done a lot of deflection here this morning as well. Every time I have asked a question, I have not got an answer.

I want to talk about County Laois. It is my constituency and where I know best. I have a voice for those people. We agree that this is a market reset from 1 March. Before then, it was only possible to increase rents by 2% annually. People with older agreements, who may only have been paying €900 a month, will now see their rents shoot up to the market rent. We know it will have a dramatic impact on them. They are not going to benefit from large private investment companies and big landlords coming to Laois. Can we be in agreement on this? Rural constituencies like Laois are not going to see anything from this change. They are just going to be further screwed. They are going to get their rents hiked up and will get nothing in return.

I would love to get an answer from the Minister on how he thinks this is going to increase supply outside the big cities. I accept that maybe big landlords, big property developers and vulture funds will benefit. We saw the Government vote down the proposal on vulture funds yesterday evening. The Government is happy and is supporting big landlords and big vulture funds. We know this is the Bill to do it. Our proposed amendment simply asks for a report within three months on what the Government is going to do for the RTB. The Government says it is collaborating with it, but this legislation is giving security of tenure for six years. If you actually listen to the facts, though, we know - Shep, the dog on the street, knows it at this stage because we have all been saying it here - that the average tenancy is three and half years. What the hell does six years matter? I want honest answers to the actual questions asked.

The Government is ramming this through and we are telling it that it is wrong. We really feel there were better ways to do this, and do not tell me we do not have plans. I have a 114-page plan from Deputy Eoin Ó Broin. The Minister knows I could put it in front of him now. The Minister knows there are plans and that there is no point in saying, "Sinn Féin this and Sinn Féin that". Sinn Féin is not in government. The Minister and his colleagues are in government and they are just throwing renters under the bus. Can the Minister honestly say rents are not going to go up and by an enormous amount? What about these people paying €900 in rent now who are going to be paying €2,000? The Minister knows this is going to happen.

Let us bring this debate back to talking about the Bill, the amendments and the facts, because this is what we are here to discuss. The sooner the Minister actually takes the time to answer the questions, the sooner we can get through this. If he keeps on deflecting and if his party colleagues want to come in and keep slating Sinn Féin, we will stay here. I would like to get answers to the specific questions relating to why the Minister is not accepting the amendments and what he is actually saying about the damage he is doing to increasing rental supply where there are no plans. He knows the economic experts are saying this is not actually going to increase supply. I do not know who the Minister is listening to. If the Minister looks in his emails, he will see the messages from the Simon Communities in Ireland and Focus Ireland. I would like some proper answers.

I would like to ask the Minister a quick question. One of the Senators said we are all inconsistent on this side of the Chamber between what we say inside and outside here. I personally would like to know how I am inconsistent, because I actually think I am not inconsistent in my policies and values that are based in human rights, equality and social justice. I think I march to that beat and drum in here and in my personal life and in public life outside of the Chamber.

I will comment on the reason for these amendments around review. Purely from a project management perspective, let us say, for example, we were subcontracting a project in the NGO and civil society sector. Let us say funding was being given and we were asking one of these organisations to do a project. I do not know if the Minister's Department actually funds Threshold, but just let us say it did. We would ask the organisation to produce a report on how that money has been spent and the successes of it, if it is working well and if the project is working well from a monitoring and evaluation perspective. These amendments are for just that purpose. They are seeking that we would gather evidence we can review and reflect on it. I appreciate that the Minister said that these things are always in motion and changes are always made. These amendments are very much facilitating that, as opposed to anything else.

We heard the notion that the Government and Fianna Fáil are building and building and have always built, but the State is not building at scale. It is subcontracting building to private contractors and developers that are making quite a substantial profit off that. Linked to that, the State is then giving tax breaks to those developers, which led to €1 billion less being collected in the last budget. That was significant. It would also be great if we had a definition of what "State building" means. To me, that means the State actually doing it and not subcontracting it out to private developers for profit. Maybe that is an ideological difference we have or a difference of definition. If it is, then we are all debating in circles without really understanding what we are debating.

The State is certainly creating the conditions for developers to build. The problem with that is that developers are making money off people being able to put a roof over their head. It is all very well to create those conditions, and I think this might be the Minister's argument: that we need the private sector to build because if it does not, then there will be no building. I actually trust the State, though. Maybe not the State run by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, but in theory, I think a good, strong State can actually deliver and build. We have seen that historically in Ireland and I would love to get us back there again with things like a State construction company.

Also on the premise that the State is building, the Government actually underdelivered in 2024 by almost 10,000 homes on its promise of State building. The reason the evidence and analysis on the impact of this Bill is so important is the aspect of affordability and the difference between the Minister's belief that supply will inevitably bring down rents and my belief that it will not because of what market-driven housing will actually mean. The market wants profit. That is the nature of capitalism. The market will seek profit. Affordability is so important when we are talking about what types of properties will be built. If we take the median salary of a teacher - and I know we are talking about rental tenancies here, but it is all part of the same holistic context - they can take out a mortgage currently of €180,000. We know no teacher by themselves is buying anything with that. Will they be able to find affordable rental properties? We have gone over this. I do not see how, and, critically, when, this Bill is going to help. At what point can renters be promised there will be a decrease in rents?

The Government is putting record funding into housing. There is in excess of €9 billion for housing and water this year alone. One third of the funding for the national development plan is going into the delivery of housing and water. We know that we need at least €20 billion a year to deliver the homes we need. The Government cannot supply all that funding. We also have to build the schools, hospitals and roads we need to deliver right across the country. We need investment to deliver these homes. That is the reality of it. There is no other way to deliver the homes we need.

Since 2014, the population of this country has increased by over 800,000 people. This has enriched our country and increased diversity. A significant number of those people were Irish people returning home, but there were people coming from other countries as well, to work in our healthcare, technology and pharmaceutical sectors, as well on our farms and in other areas. As I said, this has enriched our country and increased the diversification of our country, which is very positive. An estimated increase in the population of 810,000, though, requires about 250,000 homes.

That population increase reflects the economic success this country has had, and that cannot be taken for granted. In Europe where there is a housing crisis in almost every country, we are almost unique in that we have the funds to try to address supply and affordability. Most countries are not in that situation. Look at the UK and London, for example, and how few homes are being built there, despite the major housing crisis. We cannot take the economy for granted and we cannot underestimate the challenge this country is facing, out of a lot of positives, but we need to deliver supply.

As regards the first amendment relating to a workforce plan for the Residential Tenancies Board, I have great faith in the CEO there, Rosemary Steen. We have seen a big step up in challenging landlords who have not abided by the rules and who in some cases have acted disgracefully towards their tenants. I have great faith in Ms Steen, her team and the board. We are backing it with a 70% increase in funding and further funding will be made available. It is also doing some significant work around digitalisation to make everything more effective and efficient and we will see more data being put online. I do not believe a workforce plan is needed there. We have an effective and functioning Residential Tenancies Board that perhaps was not funded in the way it should have been in the past. It needs a step up with funding and that is why we have been providing it.

As regards the conducting of reviews amendment, which is in a couple of the proposals here, Dáil Standing Order 204 provides that:

Twelve months following the enactment of a Bill, save in the case of the Finance Bill and Appropriation Bill, the member of the Government or Minister of State who is officially responsible for implementation of the Act shall provide a report which shall review the functioning of the Act and which shall be laid in the Parliamentary Library.

There are rules there that will have to be done. The Housing Agency continues to review the market and everything happening there as well. I do not think there is any area more closely analysed than housing, right across the board. While I understand the intent behind them from the Senators and the proposals for those reviews, I do not believe they are necessary.

In respect of forecasts, I take it back to the population point I made earlier. Who was predicting in 2014 that the population would increase by 810,000? Nobody, absolutely nobody. Markets are dynamic, populations are dynamic and societies are dynamic in terms of what people need. We also see that families are smaller and so we need a lot more homes for the same amount of population we might have needed 20, 30 and 40 years ago. We always have to keep everything under assessment and review for what is needed and where.

The increases in apartments are mostly driven in the cities. They are needed but the suggestion that somehow that is our only solution and the invective about vultures and landlords, I get it and the kind of misdirection put out there. The reality is, in 2024, our local authorities directly built more social homes than in any year since the mid-1970s, and I have no doubt 2025 is going to be even higher. We are delivering social homes, affordable homes and affordable measures.

Affordability was raised by Senator Andrews. We are acutely aware of affordability, and that is why we brought in some significant measures to help people get their homes and be able to afford them, such as the first homes and help to buy schemes. Both schemes were opposed by Sinn Féin and I am almost curious whether Sinn Féin TDs and Senators tell people at their clinics that they do not really want those people to have the support that is out there. However, they are crucial supports for people to be able to buy their homes.

I always get frustrated when I hear some members of the Opposition, not all by any means, again with invective and it is mostly Sinn Féin members who do this-----

Surprise, surprise.

We all do our clinics. Sinn Féin does not have a monopoly on compassion. We do our clinics and we work every week for our people. The biggest issue I deal with in my clinics is housing.

Mine too.

I deal with that every single day of the week and if it is not housing, it is helping people to access their rights in healthcare and other areas as well.

Everything I do, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents supporting the Government over here do every day, is to solve the housing crisis. How we solve it is not by freezing the existing crisis, but by increasing supply. That is the only way, namely, supply of more homes, including social homes, affordable homes, private homes for sale and for rent. When I think about renters, it is not just the people who are currently renting; it is people who are at home and who need somewhere to rent. That is why we are driving supply here and why I say these proposals are efficient.

When this legislation passes, whatever anybody thinks about the resetting, in only a few years we will have gone from probably one of the most laissez-faire approaches towards tenants in the western world to one of its most protective regimes. Most of the amendments cited went to strengthen tenants' rights and that is what we are doing in this as well. Whatever anybody thinks about resetting, the security of tenure here and the removal of no-fault evictions for the majority of tenants after 1 March who take up new tenancies will give us one of the strongest regimes in protecting tenants. That is something I am very proud of.

I will hold officials to account where they are not delivering. I make no apologies for that, and it was raised in here. The reality is there are many local authorities that are not putting their rent from social homes back into social housing. The money is being used for other purposes. It is something I am examining very closely. I do not think a local authority can say on one hand that it does not have the funding for social housing maintenance while at the same time it does not put all its social housing rent back into social housing. That is not an issue with every local authority but certainly is with several local authorities I am examining closely. Rent should be kept in for social housing. It was a mistake that was made in the past under tenant purchase schemes, not so much with the houses being sold but that the money was not put back into more social housing in particular. It was a serious problem in the past.

For student accommodation and our purpose-built student accommodation, we have put in the additional restriction that it can only be reset every three years but I know there are always particular challenges for students in those areas. The Minister, Deputy Lawless, is working very hard in that area.

I was in Laois only last week and I have to give credit to the officials there because they are an exemplar for every local authority across the country in how they are driving social homes and affordable homes. It also sees itself as a full housing authority and is facilitating the delivery of private homes also. There was never a suggestion that large-scale apartments were the solution for Laois. The solution for Laois is the kind of housing I have seen being driven by the local authority down there; social, affordable and private, with the social and affordable being backed by this Government, which is essential.

I have just one comment for Senator Higgins. She referenced fire safety and standards being reduced and she should withdraw that comment. I do not know of any incident where fire safety standards have been reduced in recent years. I am not aware of any in that regard. We have changed specifications around apartments but nothing on fire safety. That is a very dangerous comment to put out there.

If the Minister looked at the changes to apartments-----

I will let the Senator in when the Minister has concluded.

I do not want that comment going out there unchallenged.

I have tried to address as many of the issues raised and I have addressed the amendments a second time. That is as much as I can say for the moment.

I was going to say there have been significant concerns regarding the reduction of the number of exits and the size of units. The Minister will be aware that academics have pointed to the changes, not in the fire safety rules, but in apartment design and standards leading to fire safety issues and jeopardy.

We have had a narrative about gold-plating which has been accompanied by a quite systematic set of lowering of standards, even at EU level through omnibus measures. It is important to signal these issues and concerns because there are consequences of that. Significant concerns were raised about more units being placed with smaller sizes and less shared access to exits in relation to apartment standards. A fire safety consequence or risk was identified in relation to that, not a specific dilution - it may be in the fire safety standards - but an associated risk.