2026-05-19

I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes with extreme concern that: — 7,062 eviction notices were issued to tenants from January to March this year, up 51 per cent on the same period in 2025; — at the end of 2025 new rents were up statewide 5 per cent and 4.4 per cent for existing rents; and — six counties had double digit rent inflation last year including Limerick (12.6 per cent), Monaghan (12.4 per cent), Westmeath (11.5 per cent), Offaly (10.8 per cent), Cavan (10.6 per cent) and Galway (9.9 per cent); further notes that: — Statewide new rents were €1,744 per month and existing rents were €1,503 per month at the end of 2025; — new rents in Dublin were €2,232 per month and existing rents were €1,931 per month at the end of last year; — the Residential Tenancies Board's dispute caseload increased by 17.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same time last year; — all of this was prior to the Governments new rent regulations which came into effect which will see rents, evictions and disputes increase over the coming year; — these trends are the direct result of Government policy and will lead to increased displacement of tenants, increased rents and increased homelessness; and — Government continues to miss their social and affordable housing targets, targets that were too low to begin with, too few private for purchase homes are being built or coming to the market; resolves that: — Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's housing policy continues to make the housing crisis worse and in particular is failing renters; calls on Government to: — introduce an emergency ban on rent increases and no-fault evictions; — cut private rents by putting a full month's rent back into every private renter's pockets; — oppose rent increases for Council tenants, those in receipt of Housing Assistance Payment and Rental Accommodation Scheme and cost rental tenants; and — introduce a radical reset of housing policy as set out by the Housing Commission and to increase and accelerate the delivery of social, affordable and private for purchase homes. I acknowledge the fact that the Minister is in a meeting with the Oliver Bond Regeneration Forum and I hope he listens carefully to what he hears from the residents. Ten months ago, the Government announced what can only be described as the most controversial restructuring of the private rental sector in a decade. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage unilaterally changed apartment standards, and not in a good way. He outlined changes to rent regulation that were introduced earlier this year and made it clear that it was the Government's intention to give massive tax breaks to apartment developers. When the Minister outlined this, both at the time and subsequently, he said that he was doing it because he believed it would increase the supply of much-needed homes and that over time, rents would reduce. We said then and we are saying now that, in fact, the only thing that this cocktail of policy changes would do was make renters pay for the failed policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over a decade. We warned the Government that it would not work and that it would lead, at the very best, to a modest increase in apartment supply in parts of Dublin and possibly in Cork city, but that supply would be poorer quality, smaller, darker and more expensive and the rest of the country would get completely left behind. What we also made clear was that the introduction of the controversial market rent reset would see a dramatic increase in new rents for new tenancies from March of this year and that the incredibly confusing and poorly thought-through changes to tenure arrangements would lead to widespread confusion and an undermining of tenant security. It gives me no pleasure to say this but last week's Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, director's report confirms our worst fears. The Government did such a bad job of explaining what were incredibly complex tenure rules that it has led to an acceleration of the exit of single-property landlords from the market. More than 7,000 eviction notices were issued in the first three months of this year, the highest on record and up 51% on the previous quarter. In fact, according to one academic, this is the highest number of evictions since the Famine. That is truly astonishing. Contrary to the Government's attempts to explain this away, it is the third straight quarter in which we have seen a dramatic increase in eviction notices since the Minister announced his foolhardy changes. The RTB report also announced rents increasing significantly up to the end of last year. It now costs more than €20,000 minimum, on average, to rent across the State while in Dublin at the end of last year, the minimum was €26,000. It is going to be very interesting when we get to see the first set of Daft.ie figures, which are imminent, on the market rent reset. We will comment on them when they are published. The Minister's proposals will have a limited impact on supply but they will have a huge impact on renters. What does that mean? Right now, thousands of renters, single people, couples, families with children and pensioners do not know where they are going to live in six months. They are now desperately searching for an alternative rental, just at the time when Government allows landlords to jack up the rent for new rentals. What will the consequences be? Some renters will be able to find a new home but they will pay thousands of euro more than what they would otherwise have been paying in rent. Many others will not be able to secure a rental, particularly in the big cities of Waterford, Galway, Limerick and Cork. The daft.ie figures, whenever they are published, will be very revealing. What will people do? In many cases, working people, including single people, couples and families with children, will be forced into the indignity of moving back in with their parents because they have nowhere else to go. Others will see it as the straw that broke the camel's back and that they have no option but to emigrate to Canada, Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere. Worst of all, we will see an acceleration in the number of single people, couples and adults with children presenting as homeless and entering into emergency accommodation at a time when the numbers in such accommodation are higher than at any other time since records began. Those are the consequences of the Government's policy. It has done this knowingly and deliberately and it has done so for no good reason. The motion we have tabled tonight is not just to highlight all of those Government failures but to tell the Government loud and clear that renters need a different approach. It is an approach that recognises that rents are already too high and must be cut. It recognises that rent increases cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely and that we need an emergency ban on such increases for three years. Crucially, at a time when homeless services are completely overwhelmed, we need an emergency ban on no-fault evictions where the tenant has done nothing wrong. Of course, what we really need is not larger volumes of smaller, darker and more expensive apartments but, rather, the right kind of supply in the right place at the right price. That requires the Government to introduce the kinds of reforms set out by Sinn Féin, the Housing Commission and others to see the supply of social, genuinely affordable and private for-purchase homes increase and accelerate way beyond where the Government is currently at. How bad do things have to get before the Government accepts it has done something wrong? How much more hardship will it foist on renters? Our motion sets out the alternative. It is time the Government stopped looking after the interests of big investors and developers and started standing up for renters. It is on this basis that I commend the motion to the House.

The Government amendment to the motion is an insult to the more than 7,000 families who received notices to quit in the first three months of the year and the thousands of families who received such notices at the end of last year. Those people are facing eviction and do not know where they will be in four, five, six, seven or eight months' time. They are asking where they are going to live and where their children will play and go to school. The Government claims the figures in March were not as bad as previously. It pats itself on the back in relation to tax breaks for developers and speculators who have apartments that already were profitable. Can the Minister of State imagine how those families feel hearing that? Where is the justice and fairness? I can imagine how those 7,000 families felt when they read at the weekend that the CEOs of some of these development companies earn and take bonuses of €41 million. Where is the fairness in that? A mother contacted me to say, "Every day, I search for somewhere for us to live and, every night, I lie awake and wonder what will happen to my little boy if I cannot find a home in time". How must she feel hearing about that €41 million? I have heard from a pensioner who has worked all his life and is now facing eviction. How can we live in a country where people work all their life and are made homeless when they come to pension age? How can that be right? Another man who contacted me is working two jobs but cannot keep a roof over his head and does not know where he will go when his eviction notice expires. There might be a gravy train for developers, speculators and investment funds but where is the gravy train for ordinary people? In fact, they do not even want that. They are just looking for a roof over their head. We want to put people first. If Sinn Féin were in government, we would stop homelessness and stop this craziness. We put families and people before investors. It is as simple as that.

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for putting forward this motion and for all the work he does in this area. It at least gives people hope to know somebody listens, cares, is paying attention and has a solution. Time and again, we see Government policy making the housing crisis it has created even worse. We warned it that its legislation would result in a surge in evictions. We warned it would contribute to the rising numbers of homelessness. The Government did not listen. It pressed ahead and, as it does, did the bidding of big developers and those people who seem to have its ear. The people in my constituency have my ear. I understand the Minister of State's colleague turns a deaf ear to them. She has no office, does not do clinics and is not available. That is fine. It is her thing. Last week, I sat in my office with a woman who had a notice to quit in her hand. She was told by her landlord that she must be out in June. She received a letter from the council stating, "We cannot advise whether Fingal County Council will be in a position to accept tenant in situ applications in 2026 as funding is determined by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage". She sobbed her heart out as she asked me to put a very simple question to the Government: How many people have to become homeless before it recognises that there needs to be a change of course? How many people must find themselves sitting in their TD's office clutching a notice to quit and sobbing their heart out before the Government takes meaningful action? There are 17,500 people homeless, 5,500 of whom are children. Will the Government care when 6,000 children are homeless? Will reality penetrate when the number goes to 7,000? We have offered solutions this evening. The only thing that will help the woman who came to my office in the short term is a ban on evictions. I urge the Minister of State to think about the people, including the children, behind the statistics.

Since the Government was formed, nearly 2,000 eviction notices have been issued to renters in County Galway. Every week, people come to my constituency office who have received a notice to quit and have no idea where they will go because the rental market they face is totally unaffordable. Rents across the State have risen by 80% compared with ten years ago. Within the past year alone, the rent for an average home in County Galway has risen by more than 10%. Lack of supply and unaffordable prices have not happened by accident. They are the direct consequence of failed Government policy. The legislation brought forward in March has allowed rents to be hiked even further and has led to a surge in evictions. The Government knew that would be the consequence. It is shameful. Our motion sets out the real solution we need, which is the provision of actually affordable housing. Unfortunately, this stands in direct contrast to the Government's approach. After years of waiting, the first affordable housing scheme in Galway East was finally announced for Athenry in recent weeks. However, to own one of those affordable homes, first-time buyers must pay out between €425,000 and €475,000. How on earth can the Government call that affordable housing for first-time buyers? What planet is the Minister of State living on? It is an absolute insult to people. When I went to the information evening on the scheme in Athenry last week, people there were absolutely disgusted when the prices were outlined to them. The scheme will be of no benefit to anybody currently locked out of home ownership, even with the equity stake taken out of the price. We have rising numbers of eviction notices, rip-off rents and unaffordable house prices. The Government's record is clear and it shows complete failure. If it cannot or will not implement the solutions outlined in this motion to deliver homes that ordinary families can afford, it is time for it to go.

I thank my colleague, Teachta Ó Broin, for bringing forward the motion. The Government's housing record is not just a failure; it is a disgrace. In County Clare alone, 125 notices of termination were received by the RTB in quarter 1 of 2026, compared with 79 in the same period last year. That number is not just a statistic. These are 125 people and families having their lives turned upside down – families living in fear, stress and uncertainty about where they will sleep next week or next month. At the very same time, the average rent in County Clare has risen to €1,249 per month. That is up from €1,089 this time last year. That is a staggering 14% increase on top of soaring energy bills, childcare costs and rising costs of living. Many renters are paying far more than the average. In our constituency offices we are meeting young couples who are both working full-time but are forced to move back in with their parents because they simply cannot afford these sky-high rents. There are retired people couch surfing. We are even dealing with a couple living in a car who are expecting a baby any day now. This is the brutal reality of this Government's housing policy. Instead of standing up for ordinary workers, families, renters and students, this Government continues to side with institutional investors and big, corporate landlords. It is willingly pursuing policies which drive up rents and facilitate evictions, throwing renters to the wolves while protecting the profits of vulture funds. The Government should be standing up for these renters, banning rent increases and no-fault evictions, and closing loopholes which allow excessive service charges to rise out of control and out of affordability. It needs to oppose rent increases for council tenants, for those in receipt of housing assistance payment, HAP, and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and for cost-rental tenants. People cannot take any more; they need a Government that is on their side. They have become numb to the fact that we have more than 5,570 children who are homeless. How can the Government stand over that? How can it say it is doing everything when the numbers on the homeless lists are just going up and up? The Government has failed renters and communities like those in County Clare are paying the price.

Hear, hear.

I ask the Minister of State to address the shocking case of a self-employed couple in Coolboy near the Wicklow-Wexford border, Ciarán and Jessie Redmond, and their two daughters Kendall and Chanelle. Chanelle has recently been diagnosed with leukaemia. Her father, Ciarán, a Gorey man, has been forced to give up his work as a painter and decorator to care for her. As they battle one unimaginable crisis, another has now emerged: homelessness. Their landlord is selling the house, as is their right. However, the Government classes Ciarán and Jessie as too rich for social housing - they are above the low threshold - but too poor to get mortgage approval. They were told that there is not a chance and that they might get €40,000, which is probably enough for a hen house. Jessie has a barber’s business in Arklow. These are two self-employed people who have not been looking for anything from the State. They work hard and pay taxes and VAT at the end of every month. Now, in their hour of need, all doors are being slammed in their faces. They were even told they do not qualify for emergency accommodation. Can the Minister of State believe that? The family say they have fallen through a cruel gap in our totally broken system. They are considered too well-off on paper for help, but in reality they are struggling to survive under impossible pressure. This pressure has also affected their other daughter, Kendall, who is suffering from depression due to all of the stress. Ireland’s rigid means-test system is failing ordinary working families who suddenly find themselves in crisis through no fault of their own. These people are the new working poor; the proverbial squeezed middle or, should we say, the screwed middle. The State has completely lost its way and its priorities. Its housing policies prioritise institutional investors and big developers rather than renters and hard-working families. I ask the Minister of State to support Sinn Féin's Bill, which would cut rents, ban rent increases and no-fault evictions, and accelerate the provision of social, affordable and private for-purchase homes.

The prolonged Government-sponsored housing crisis is affecting every community in this State, none more so than County Mayo, where there are 2,664 people on the council waiting list, 924 people on the HAP waiting list and 744 people on the RAS list. As a result of the Government’s housing policies, working people, pensioners and vulnerable tenants are being forced out of their homes with nowhere for them to go while private rents continue to spiral out of control. Recent figures from the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, revealed a 51% increase in evictions, the highest level since the Famine. Thousands of people are now desperately searching for a place to live. If they find one, they will be paying thousands more in rent each year. If they do not, they face moving back in with family, if they can do that, or alternatively emigrating or homelessness. Michael Davitt was one of County Mayo's greatest people. He fought for land, for dignity and for justice for ordinary people. He believed no person should live at the mercy of insecurity and exploitation, but that is exactly what is happening right now. Today, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have ensured that ordinary families have literally been left out in the cold. I am dealing with a case in County Mayo of a man in his 70s. He is a RAS tenant who is facing eviction after 21 years in his home. He lives with serious health conditions, uses a walker and is on 22 different daily medications. After 30 years on the council waiting list, he has effectively been told to fend for himself in a rental market that is completely out of reach. I ask the Minister of State what I should tell this man. I only want one answer from him today. Where should he go and where should the thousands more like him go? I ask the Minister of State to look at me. Where do they go? I am not being political; I am asking him to tell me where I can tell them to go. The council staff cannot tell them where to go, except to Charlestown in emergencies and there is limited space there. There is no place for people to go when they are being made homeless in County Mayo and across other counties. Can the Minister of State give us a solution right here, right now? We have given the Government solutions in terms of cutting rent, banning no-fault evictions, accelerating delivery of social and genuinely affordable homes, or even expanding tenant in situ so we can deal with emergency situations like this.

I move: To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following: "notes that: — the Government is fully committed to tackling high rents and ensuring an increase in the supply of affordable high-quality rental accommodation through continued significant capital investment including cost rental and other means and in a manner that respects the security of tenure for renters by ensuring equity and fairness for landlords and tenants; — comprehensive reviews of the private rental market and of the Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs) rent control system were undertaken in 2024 and 2025, which assessed the rental market generally, the operation of RPZs since their introduction, their impact on the market and relevant stakeholders, the retention of landlords and attracting new investment; — the review of RPZs by the Housing Agency involved comprehensive engagement with a wide range of stakeholders, including investors, representatives of landlord and tenant advocacy groups, academics and the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB); — the Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 came into effect on 1st of March, 2026, introducing a new national rent control for all tenancies, which limits rent increases to inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) up to a maximum of 2 per cent, for new build apartments and student-specific accommodation, however, rent increases are capped at the level of inflation CPI only, these changes were introduced to promote greater investment in the rental market and to increase the supply of rental properties, the Act also provides significant improvements in security of tenure for renters; — while February saw a sharp increase in Notices of Terminations (NoTs), the RTB confirmed that the trend is moderating, with an 18 per cent increase for March compared to March 2025 but a 39 per cent decrease from February 2026; — to offer greater protection to tenants, rolling six-year tenancies of minimum duration (TMD) apply for new tenancies created for the first time between parties on or after 1st of March, 2026, this means a new tenancy that continues for six months becomes a tenancy of unlimited duration, with rolling six year TMDs, providing real security of tenure for tenants; — nationally, registered private tenancies rose by 2.44 per cent annually to 246,477 in Q1 2026; — the number of private landlords rose by 1.3 per cent annually to 105,847, indicating increased participation in the rental market, there is no exodus of landlords from the market, and the rental sector continues to show resilience; — Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025-2030, recognises that the rental market is an important element of a well-functioning housing system, it contains a suite of measures to support domestic and international investment in the delivery of new rental properties, in particular the supply of new apartments; — Ireland is facing a shortage of rental homes, especially apartments, recent reforms to the rental market aim to encourage investment and development, which will encourage the building of new rental apartments, help slow down rent increases and moderate rent levels over time; — Government has significantly increased resources allocated to the RTB to meet the demands of a modern rental sector; — further Government measures introduced to support renters include the increase in the tax credit for renters under Budget 2025 to a maximum of €1,000 for each renter in a household, Budget 2026 extends the Rent Tax Credit, which was due to expire at the end of 2025, for a further three years, to the end of 2028; and — the increase in the thresholds for access to Cost Rental homes, which was increased from €53k net to €66k net in Dublin and €59k outside Dublin, in July 2023; acknowledges that increased supply is key to meeting demand and moderating the pent-up pressures in the private rental sector and welcomes that: — there has been an unprecedented level of delivery of new-build social homes, with 2025 representing the largest number of new build social homes constructed since the foundation of the State; — the new housing plan Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025-2030, is focussed on putting in place the conditions to enable delivery of a minimum of 300,000 new homes; — the plan includes a commitment to deliver 72,000 social homes and provide 90,000 affordable supports to help people secure a home of their own; — it seeks to significantly accelerate delivery of new homes by focusing on activating land and creating the optimal environment to encourage housing activity, including regulatory reform, tax incentives and the largest ever capital investment in the history of the State, with €275 billion invested in infrastructure over ten years through the National Development Plan; — to accelerate future supply, Budget 2026 included a suite of taxation measures aimed at stimulating the supply of new apartments including a reduced Value-Added Tax rate and an enhanced Corporation Tax deduction for apartment construction costs; — the revised National Planning Framework, published in April 2025, is a major step forward in this regard, and will help increase capacity and accelerate home building across the country; and — the delivery of 300,000 homes by 2030 will however require an estimated €20 billion in development finance each year, a significant portion of which will need to come from investment by the private sector to support home ownership and a well-functioning private rental market; recognises that considerable progress has been made, including: — almost 149,000 new homes have been delivered over the past five years, this compares with 83,267 in the previous five-year period and just 29,217 in the five years before that; — a total of 36,284 new dwellings were completed in 2025, an increase of 20 per cent year on year; — the unprecedented level of investment Government has committed will bring about a very significant scale up in the delivery of housing over the coming years, address the needs of the most vulnerable in our communities, making buying and renting homes more affordable and support the development of villages, town and cities across the country; and — the delivery of 300,000 homes by 2030 will however require an estimated €20 billion in development finance each year, a significant portion of which will need to come from investment by the private sector to support home ownership and a well-functioning private rental market; and agrees that continued implementation of Delivering Homes, Building Communities 2025-2030, represents the most appropriate response to deal with the housing challenges which Ireland is now facing.". I welcome the opportunity to respond to the motion before us this evening, which the Government does not support. Our position is set out in the amendment I have moved. I am thankful to have the opportunity to highlight how Sinn Féin’s policy suggestions would exacerbate the challenges we face when it comes to housing delivery in this country. It is simply not credible to suggest that this Government is in any way lacking in its commitment to housing. The proof of that is in the figures. Over €9 billion will be spent by the State this year across all delivery streams. Over 36,000 homes were delivered last year, up 20% on the previous year. Over 9,000 new-build social homes were delivered in 2025, the highest output on record. There have been more than 86,000 housing commencements over the past two years. In the first three months of this year alone, there have been 8,400 commencements; that is up 184% year on year. Planning momentum is also strong with 8,000 permissions granted in the past three months of 2025; up 20%. Sinn Féin is calling in this motion for a no-fault eviction ban. That is exactly what this Government has done. No-fault evictions are banned for tenancies created after 1 March 2026 in the case of large landlords. In this motion Sinn Féin is also calling for a rent freeze, which sounds great for a soundbite on social media. However, we do not have to look too far from Ireland to see the negative impact such a measure has had. When such a rent freeze was introduced in Berlin, within 12 months rental supply dropped by 50% before it was ruled unconstitutional by the supreme court there. When we debate these topics, it is important that we do not mislead and present measures which have been proven to be a failure in other jurisdictions as some sort on panacea in the Irish context. The very last thing we need in this country is to see a 50% reduction in rental supply. What the Government has sought to so with the rental reform changes which were introduced earlier this year is to strike a balance between improving security of tenure for tenants while encouraging private investment in the rental market. The fundamental cause of rising rents is insufficient supply. One sure thing is that Sinn Féin’s policies would see supply of homes drop significantly. Its half-baked suggestions would only worsen the situation, not to mention its attempts to hoodwink the public when it says that it would boost housing figures despite the fact that some of its TDs, including its party leader, have objected to thousands of homes across Dublin. It is important to remember how the rent reform changes came about. The Housing Commission, the recommendations of which were supported by Sinn Féin, said that the Government needed to reform the rental market. It said that reform was needed to balance the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords through a programme of legislative and regulatory reforms to make the private rental sector more attractive to both parties and to regulate market rents fairly and effectively by reforming the current system of rent regulation. The Government has done this. The Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026, which came into effect on 1 March last, introduced a new national rent control for all tenancies. Before that, we brought the whole country under a nationwide rent pressure zone with rent increases capped at 2% to protect tenants in areas which were not covered by an RPZ from significant rent increases prior to the upcoming changes. Tenancies in place prior to 1 March were unaffected by the new changes and, importantly, a significant safeguard was placed on such tenancies that stated a landlord cannot reset to market rent if a notice to quit is issued. This specific provision was inserted to stop economic evictions. New tenancies created from 1 March 2026 are subject to tenancies of minimum duration, TMDs. These will be rolling six-year tenancies, offering tenants greater stability. During the six-year period, landlords will only be able to end a tenancy in specific circumstances, such as tenants not meeting their obligations. Smaller landlords - those with three tenancies or fewer - will be allowed to terminate a tenancy if the landlord or a close family member needs to live in the property or if there is financial hardship that requires the sale of the property. Larger landlords - those with four tenancies or more - will only be able to end a tenancy in very limited circumstances such as tenants not paying their rent. We need to see supply with security. The Government decision delivers that balance by introducing critical measures to attract investment in new apartment construction. These measures are essential to increasing supply and will ultimately lead to more available accommodation and more affordable rents. Sinn Féin turns a blind eye to the Housing Agency review of the rent control system, which said that the inability to reset rents was a particularly harsh aspect of the system and a fundamental barrier to investment to drive more supply. The Government is fully committed to tackling high rents and ensuring an increase in the supply of high-quality rental accommodation. We are doing this through significant capital investment and through housing measures, such as providing cost rental homes, of which we have delivered more than 6,200 so far. It is quite clear that this motion was prompted by the recently published RTB-ESRI rent index for the fourth quarter of 2025 and the RTB director’s report for the first quarter of 2026. It is important to note in the context of this debate that we cannot just focus on one set of facts. We have to look at the whole picture, rather than cherry-pick statistics. While all of the focus is on certain statistics within the report, we have to focus on the overall report. While 7,062 notices of termination is undoubtedly high, it is also worth noting that there were also 16,548 new tenancy registrations confirmed in the first quarter. Nationally, registered private tenancies rose by 2.44% annually to 246,477 in the first quarter of 2026. Of these, 5,226 were cost-rental tenancies, which increased by 87% year on year. The number of private landlords also rose by 1.3% annually to 105,847, indicating increased participation in the rental market. The RTB data therefore shows continued resilience in the Irish rental sector, with ongoing growth in tenancies and landlords in the market. Our housing plan is building on the strongest period of delivery in a generation. In the past five years, almost 149,000 new homes have been delivered. Our plan is ambitious. It commits to the delivery of 300,000 new homes over its lifetime, including 72,000 social homes and 90,000 affordable housing supports to help people to buy or rent at a cost they can sustain. Increasing supply is the single most important lever we have to moderate prices, improve affordability, reduce homelessness and increase home ownership for families and ordinary workers. The plan rests on two core pillars. The first, activating supply, is about removing the structural barriers to housing output. It is about unlocking land, reforming and accelerating planning, investing in water, energy and transport infrastructure and addressing viability challenges so homes can be built where they are needed. At the same time, we are expanding construction capacity through apprenticeships and modern methods of construction, MMC, and bringing vacant and derelict homes back into use through grants and a derelict property tax. The second pillar, supporting people, recognises that supply alone is not enough. We must ensure that those most impacted by the housing crisis are supported directly and effectively. Over the lifetime of this plan, we will deliver an average of 12,000 new social homes each year. That is an unprecedented commitment. A stable and predictable rental framework is essential. Without it, supply will contract further and renters will suffer the consequences. Progress is being made. Completions are rising. Social and affordable output is at record levels. Planning reforms are accelerating delivery. Infrastructure investment is being aligned with housing growth. However, we are honest about the scale of the task at hand. There is no single measure, no simple ban or freeze that will solve the challenges we face. The Government’s approach is clear. We need to increase supply at scale; protect and prioritise home ownership; deliver record levels of social and affordable housing; strengthen tenant protections; and mobilise public and private investment to build the homes our growing population requires. Delivering Homes, Building Communities is a funded, actionable plan which recognises that solving the housing crisis demands persistence, partnership and pragmatism. We will continue to act as a Government to ensure we drive delivery, because that is the only sustainable answer to the challenges we face. It is the supply of more homes and that is what our plan will achieve.

Here we go again. The Government comes in here and pats itself on the back for everything it is doing on housing while families face evictions and rent hikes and we have record homelessness. When Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Independents introduced the rent hike Bill last summer, we warned that all it would do was push more families into homelessness and - surprise, surprise - that is precisely what has happened. The Minister of State and the Government sided with institutional investors and big landlords and threw renters under the bus. Behind every one of the 7,000 eviction notices - the highest number ever recorded - are real people and families. Think of a family who have just secured a place in the local school for this September and are now scrambling to find a home in the same area, when there is nothing available. What will the Minister of State say to them? What will he say to those who have worked all their lives and are now wondering whether they will ever have a secure roof over their heads? There is nowhere for these people to go. We need an emergency ban on rent increases and no-fault evictions and that includes council tenants. The Government needs to ramp up social housing and truly affordable private homes. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have had 15 years to get this right and again and again, they have let families down. All they seem to do is make the situation worse and this has to change.

I commend Deputy Ó Broin on bringing forward this motion. We clearly have a situation where rents and evictions are out of control in every part of the country and it is spiralling at an alarming rate. At the moment, I am dealing with a group of houses in my constituency in Enniscrone, Sonas. It is elder care accommodation beside a nursing home. Older people who live there have received eviction notices telling them they have to move out. They have nowhere to go. Some of them are on the council tenancy list, waiting to get into local authority houses. There are no local authority houses in that area or anywhere in Sligo for them to go to. Others are above the threshold because their pensions are slightly higher, with a couple living in a house and they also have nowhere to go. We are in a situation where the Government seems to have its eyes closed to the reality of ordinary people on the ground. In his speech, the Minister of State mentioned that there are no easy solutions, that the Government has a long-term plan to deal with this and that caps and trying to freeze rents will not solve anything. It would solve problems for the people who cannot afford their rent at the moment and for those facing eviction. There are thousands of them across the country. I am sure the Minister of State deals with them in his constituency in the same way as the rest of us do. Yet, for some reason, the only thing the Government is prepared to listen to on the housing situation are the corporate interests of the big landlord companies. They are the only ones who get any deal, who are sorted out in any way when it comes to all of this. The ordinary people who are trying their best to survive and manage are making no progress whatsoever with this Government when it comes to delivering housing. What we are calling for here is very clear: we need the Government to bring in a strategy whereby it caps rents, freezes rents and bans evictions so that people can have the security of knowing they will not be leaving their homes. If we do not do that, the 51% increase we see will be double that this time next year.

Many people are at risk of homelessness. People expect their Government to have their back. That is why they are so frustrated, especially renters, when it seems that every intervention from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael actually makes their situation worse. In my constituency of Cavan-Monaghan, both counties were among the six in the State which saw double-digit rent inflation last year. We saw rents increase by 10.6% in Cavan and by a staggering 12.4% in Monaghan. What was the Government's response to these rent increases? It was new rent regulations, which will see rents and evictions increase. The RTB has already seen a 17% increase in its caseload in the first quarter of this year. The first three months of this year also saw 118 people evicted from their homes in the Cavan-Monaghan constituency. Across the State, there has been a 50% rise in evictions since the new rules came into force. Once again, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are making the housing crisis worse. What is needed now is a response from the Government that for the first time prioritises renters, not vulture funds, landlords or speculators. Sinn Féin's motion includes provisions mandating the Government to introduce an emergency ban on rent increases and no-fault evictions and to cut private rents by putting a full month's rent back in every private renter's pocket. These measures should be agreeable to every Member of this House who is concerned about the well-being of their constituents. I urge Deputies to give this motion their full support.

My blood is boiling after listening to that speech. Fine Gael has been in power for 15 years and Fianna Fáil supported the party for 11 of those years. It has been the same absolute waffle. Who has done great out of this in all of that time? It has been the bankers, bondholders, developers and vultures - the corporate interests. They have all been paid. They have all got their deals. This Government will go down in history, and in shame. Multiple Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing Ministers presided over the worst housing evictions since the Famine. Is that why we fought for our freedom and independence? Is that what de Valera had in his head when he established Fianna Fáil - to outdo the British occupiers in evicting people on this island? Sinn Féin again calls for an emergency ban on no-fault evictions and a freeze on rent hikes. These are the only measures that will protect the thousands who face eviction. I spoke to Ciara this evening, a young mother born and reared in Dublin 15, who is in a hub in a hotel in Tallaght. Spiralling rent has made it impossible for her. Another couple are being evicted this Friday. The mother has severe medical needs and needs daily medical care. The family is not on the housing list. They are new to the system and are terrified. They cannot afford €2,000 in rent. A couple of apartments are owned by the vulture groups in Dublin 15. It costs €2,100 to rent a one-bedroom apartment and €2,500 to rent a two-bedroom apartment in the Windmill development. I met two other families in my office last week, both of which have four children and have spent four years in homeless accommodation in one room. The last time I heard of entire families living in one room was in a tenement museum in Henrietta Street that I visited last year. Can the Minister of State imagine that a hotel or a building housing homeless people might become a museum? Historians will show future generations that in 2026 thousands of children were housed in these buildings for years and the housing Minister of the day chose to do nothing to end it, despite this being one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, with billions in surplus budgets.

I thank the Deputy.

The Government can choose that legacy today.

The housing situation in Kildare has reached a point of crisis. The overwhelming majority of cases raised by constituents who come into my office looking for help relates to housing. New figures show that in the first quarter of 2026 alone, the RTB received 250 notices of termination in Kildare, an increase of almost 100 compared to the same period last year. Nationally, evictions rose by 50%. These figures are a damning indictment of the Government's recent housing policy. Renters are being squeezed to breaking point – forced back into their parent's homes, driven abroad and, in far too many cases, pushed into homelessness. Kildare County Council's homelessness team confirmed to me just last week that it is currently overwhelmed with cases. There are no emergency accommodation vacancies available in the county, while the family hubs are operating waiting lists. As a result, large numbers of people in Kildare are now relying on the homelessness freephone services and families can be allocated a different hotel every night, in many cases outside the county. This is unacceptable for anyone but it is especially traumatic for young families trying to maintain some sense of normality in their lives. I am currently dealing with several cases involving single mothers who have either been evicted or are facing eviction imminently. No child should have to endure this level of instability and disruption in a State running a budget surplus of almost €10 billion. Many other vulnerable groups, including older people, are affected by the Government-sanctioned wave of evictions across my constituency. Even those who can somehow afford the astronomical rents being charged in Kildare have difficulty finding accommodation. For families depending on HAP, securing a tenancy has become virtually impossible.

Ba mhaith liom ar dtús mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an bPáirtí Sinn Féin as ucht an rún seo a thabhairt faoi bhráid na Dála anocht. Molaim agus molann Páirtí an Lucht Oibre an rún seo. The most basic test of any housing system is really quite simple; it is whether ordinary people can access secure and decent housing. In this country, we have arrived at a situation whereby the country is divided between haves and have-nots. The haves have property and secure housing and the have-nots do not. When the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, was sitting opposite me, he spoke about 762 eviction notices. He said that we were not to consider the figure in the round but in light of other RTB data. I get all that, but at the same time 762 people got notices of termination in the first couple of months of this year. They are people who have children in school. They work hard and contribute to their communities. They are involved in their GAA clubs and in other activities. They pay their rent on time. They do everything right, yet they received the dreaded notice of termination at the start of this year. The most depressing thing about being having this debate tonight is that it is all fairly predictable. I worry and wonder how bad things must get before the Government takes its head out of the sand and acts. It was repeatedly warned that weakening protections for renters, failing to control rents and relying on an overheated market in the way it has done would make this crisis worse. The consequence of the Government's rental reforms is that eviction notices are up by 51% and disputes with the RTB are up by nearly 18%. New rents average €1,755 a month. Rent is more than €2,200 a month for new renters in Dublin and more than €2,100 in Galway and Limerick. In loads of counties we have had double-digit rent inflation. We have had 12.6% in Limerick and 9.9%, just under 10%, in Galway. The Government can repeat ad nauseam the talking points it has in its countermotion in respect of supply, but the fact of the matter is that homelessness has risen in this country to a level that we have never seen in the history of the State. House prices continue to rise, and all around the country we see young people postponing key life milestones because they cannot secure a stable home. We have couples in their 30s who are back in their childhood bedrooms and families going from homeless hub to homeless hub. Last week, while canvassing in the by-elections, as many Deputies across the House were, I met an individual in the north inner city of Dublin who told me he has been homeless for nearly six years and has moved 78 times during that period. That level of displacement, poverty and insecurity has stuck with me ever since. It is not just that man I met last week, however. People with decent jobs, decent salaries and decent lives are living completely precarious lives because being renters means their lives are built on quicksand. What really depresses me is the way the Government treats skyrocketing rents as necessary but unfortunate, or unfortunate but inevitable. The fact of the matter is, we now accept things that would have been politically unimaginable a decade ago. Time and again, we hear the same mantra about the need to incentivise supply and the need for private sector investment. The Government repeatedly uses this as its reasoning for the rental reforms introduced as part of the rent pressure zones amendment Bill. The type of supply the Government talks about incentivising is a small number of high-yield, expensive, build-to-rent luxury developments. What this means in practice is a small number of expensive apartment developments, maybe in the docklands, Sandyford or Cork, but certainly not in Limerick where there was a 12.6% rent increase, and not in Galway either, where there was a 9.9% increase. The Government is doing nothing to address this. There is no acknowledgment of it in the countermotion. I was enraged when I read the countermotion because it states that "the Government is fully committed to tackling high rents". When I saw that statement, I nearly fell out of my chair. How can the Government put that into a countermotion when it has legislated to allow landlords to put rents in this country through the roof under the market reset element of the legislation, which I begged the Minister to remove during the Committee and Second Stage debates on the rent pressure zones amendment Bill. I even tabled a sensible middle-ground compromise amendment providing for a rent break to moderate the worst of the Bill and to protect renters. On every Stage, I was completely ignored and the legislation was guillotined. For the Government to put into a countermotion that it is "fully committed to tackling high rents" is simply factually incorrect. It is untrue and misleading. The countermotion is not grounded in reality. Elsewhere, it states that "recent reforms to the rental market aim to encourage investment and development, which will encourage the building of new rental apartments, help slow down rent increases and moderate rent levels over time". The rent levels for new build luxury apartments and luxury student accommodation are tied directly to the consumer price index, CPI, and are exempt from the 2% rent cap. That means these newly built apartments enter the market at already over-inflated rents and because they are exempt from the cap, they drive rents even higher. In Dublin, rent consumes about 50% of a worker's after-tax income. In Galway and Limerick, the figures are 45% and 35%, respectively. This Government, through the policy interventions it has taken, is subsidising and sponsoring what I can only describe as a build-to-rent cartel. The Government is either not being honest with people or it genuinely does not understand the cause and effect of what it is doing. I do not know which is more worrying. The policy framework the Government has assumes that lifting rent controls on new properties will fast-track investment into these high-density apartment blocks and enough of them will be built to level off rents and start to bring them down. This is notwithstanding the fact that the apartments can take years to materialise or that they will not materialise in most locations in the country. In addition, while all of this is going on, renters will continue to be crushed by these astronomical rent increases. The Government has gutted the rent pressure zones regime in order to feed this system. It will never be able to feed it enough to satiate it properly and, in the meantime, renters have been thrown to the wolves and the housing and homelessness crisis, the worst in the history of the State, is continuing to break its own records. What depresses me most is that there is a lack of constructive engagement with anyone in opposition on any of these issues. The countermotion, in my view, embodies that because when legislation is tabled, it is voted down on Second Stage if it is Opposition legislation or, if it is a Government Bill, the guillotine is used and it is rammed through. I thought it was interesting that there was no mention of homelessness in the countermotion. The Government has no new measures in relation to homelessness, which is worsening every month, quarter and year. While the countermotion speaks of 2025 and the largest number of new-build social homes constructed since the foundation of the State, it fails to mention that the Government never met its targets under Housing for All, that the in-built housing deficit continues to grow, and that the Government continues to rely on a baseline that is disconnected form the reality of the housing crisis due to the housing deficit. This Government is completely in hock to institutional investors. The institutional investors wanted the market reset rent mechanism, and they got it. They wanted the apartment design changes, and they got them. They wanted subsidies, and they got the VAT cut. Meanwhile, it is renters, young people, homeless people and people in precarious situations who are paying for all of this.

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. I completely support what is set out in it. It is deeply frustrating and disappointing to engage in this debate again and see the absolute lack of concern on the Government's part. I will come back to this. I remember, when I was engaged in campaigning against the lifting of the eviction ban after Covid, describing the Government at the time as being one of the cruellest Governments we have had since the foundation of the State. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael today have managed to outdo that. The level of acceptance of evictions is mind-blowing for me. It is just batted away that 7,000 households have been evicted during the first quarter of this year. The Taoiseach earlier today referred to it as "churn", which revealed what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael think of these households. They are just "churn"; they do not really matter. I think that what we are seeing today in our housing crisis will actually be the end of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We are looking at the point at which Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael completely abandoned any pretence at standing up for ordinary people. Fine Gael was always clear about who it stood for but Fianna Fáil in particular has completely abandoned working people - ordinary people in this country. When people look back and study this period of time, the comparison with the Famine will be made. I have said for quite a while that we have now reached the point where evictions are as high as they were during the Famine. The Minister of State can shake his head but it is the truth.

The Deputy is comparing today to the Famine.

I am.

Unbelievable.

What is unbelievable is 7,000 households being evicted in the first quarter of this year and not an eyelid batted or an intervention made on the part of the Government. I have looked at it historically. The figures are there. A total of 100,000 households were evicted between 1846 and 1852. This equates to between 15,000 to 16,000 households a year. How many households were evicted last year? The answer is 20,000 households. Not only are we at the highest rate of evictions since the Famine, we have surpassed it. The rate of evictions today is higher than during the Famine and that was when we were under a colonial government. This is our own Government. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are standing over evictions that are greater than those that took place during the Famine. These are families and children. I knocked on the doors of two houses that were side by side in Cabra today. One woman was in tears because she is being evicted with nowhere to go. She is an elderly woman who has cancer and says there is nowhere she can go. The house next door is overcrowded. It is absolutely disgraceful and shameful. This Government is one of the cruellest and most callous Governments we have had since the foundation of the State. It is incredible that Micheál Martin and the Tánaiste get up here and talk about churn and evictions as if real human beings are not behind them. It is disgraceful. The other side of this is the reason house prices and rents are so high. House prices and rents are so high because what is going on in the midst of this housing disaster is massive profiteering by developers and investor funds facilitated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Last year, the head of Glenveigh, one of Ireland's biggest developers, made €3.5 million in his pay plus bonuses. The head of IRES REIT made over €1 million. If we look at IRES REIT, we can see that up to half of all rent that is being paid is going directly into profit. What is very clear is that while people are suffering as a result of this housing crisis, there are others - the ones the Government is facilitating and funding - who are actually profiting from it at unprecedented levels. Tens of millions are being made by these companies and this is what we need to reveal. It is the price gouging and profit gouging by the developers and investor funds facilitated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that is the reason people are literally being screwed on to the streets of this country because they cannot afford a home and it is utterly disgraceful. We brought forward a developer transparency profits Bill but, of course, the Government would not put it through because it does not actually want accountability for the developers and investor funds it is throwing hundreds of millions at. In Galway city, rents were €800 a month in November 2019. They are now €2,500 a month. Rents have gone through the roof. It is similar in Dublin. I can see it in my constituency. What does this Government do? It allowed rents to rise even further, breaking commitments. One of the commitments the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach made very clear was that no existing tenants would be affected by the new rules. Talk to the tenants of IRES REIT, which is our biggest landlord. They are being told in rent share situations that they cannot replace the tenant who leaves, leaving the existing tenant paying the full rent and that tenant, of course, is facing a situation where they will not be able to stay. That tenant will leave and it will be recorded as voluntary when it is not and IRES REIT can charge market rent to the new tenants bypassing the Government's rules, which said that with no-fault eviction, the landlord cannot increase the rent to market rent. What is the Minister doing? I wrote to the Minister about it last week but nothing has been done about it and nobody has said anything. IRES REIT is literally forcing tenants out, so it can get higher rents and bypass the Government's rules and there is silence from the Government. The Government has no problem with that. It is incredible. I return to the issue of evictions, the Famine and homelessness, and I will repeat it again and again. For us in the Social Democrats and for me, it is absolutely disgraceful and shameful that we are allowing higher levels of evictions than took place during the Famine and not only are we standing over it, we are facilitating it with new rental rules that incentivise landlords to evict. The Minister of State has been around and understands what is going on. How does he accept families and children being torn away from their communities and literally crying themselves to sleep? That is what people are telling us. Mothers and fathers are literally crying themselves to sleep because they do not know where they are going to go. I cannot get my head around why the Government does not put in place a ban on no-fault evictions. The Tánaiste and Taoiseach stand up here and say they care about this country and that there is no monopoly on who has compassion in this Dáil but there is a complete absence of compassion from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach, and I will name it. It is absolutely shameful. It is shameful that the Taoiseach of this country comes in here and says higher evictions than the Famine are just churn but it gets even worse. What have the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste done in the past few months? They have started to turn the attention onto immigrants and blame immigrants for the housing crisis but it is not really surprising when we look at the Taoiseach's mentor, Bertie Ahern, and what he said at the doors - that nasty comment. It just revealed how politically callous Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are. The shift involves the most privileged people in this country turning around and because of their failures, blaming the most vulnerable people in this country who have fled here seeking refuge and who are working in our nursing homes and care homes. It is really disgusting to see the Taoiseach stand up here when homelessness is raised with him and say homelessness is complicated and is not the same as it was. What is it Micheál? What is different about it? What is different about the families in emergency accommodation now compared to five years ago? Of course, what he is saying is that it is because there are immigrants here. They are not Irish citizens. Would he say the same to the Irish people in England who cannot afford to pay their rent or who are evicted? Should they not be entitled to emergency accommodation? The people who are in homelessness and in emergency accommodation in this country are homeless. They are without homes. They have been evicted - predominantly from the private rental sector - but instead what do we see from Fianna Fáil? It does everything to take attention and blame off itself. It is deeply saddening and frustrating that we have a Government that stands over the highest level of evictions since the Famine and acts as if this is okay and tolerable. I heard the Taoiseach say again today, and the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins also said it, that while 7,000 households were evicted, new tenancies were created. There is no acknowledgement in those 7,000 evictions of the stress, the anxiety, the upset and the trauma those people and children are left with. I hope the Minister of State and his family never face eviction. I hope the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach never face it, but when do they ever have any sense of what it is to be forced out of their home and to lose it? It is one of the things that motivates me because I had to leave my home when I was a private renter as a child, and it has stayed with me for life. I will stand up for those people; they should not be evicted. The Government is a disgrace.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the Government does not want to solve the housing crisis, and that it is serving the interests of people who profit from it. The worse it gets, the more those people profit. Why do I say that? The consequence of the changes around the rents in resetting them and allowing rent increases up to market levels has been an absolute disaster. For example, in my experience, one thing that was allowed and has started to happen, which I warned would happen when the legislation came in, is that as well as people being evicted on the ground of sale, which of course has been happening on a massive scale - it is the major reason people get evicted - they are being evicted on the ground that they are overcrowded. It is a very sick development in an already disastrous housing crisis with record levels of homelessness and eviction that landlords are evicting people in order to get up to the market level, on the ground that their tenants are overcrowded because those tenants may have another child or there are too many kids in a bedroom or whatever. That is now a ground to evict people. Landlords are evicting people on that basis, and I am having to deal with them. It is disgraceful, but it was an entirely predictable consequence of what the Government did. The Government could not but know that the consequence of what it did by allowing the reset of rents on the basis of market levels was going to make an already dire situation worse. However, there are beneficiaries from this, and they are precisely the 50,000 or so people who own between three and ten properties, another few thousand who own between ten and 20 and a few hundred who own hundreds of properties. These people are making an absolute fortune. The worse the housing crisis is, the more homeless people there are. The more desperate people are, the more valuable their property assets are. The more they can charge, the more profit they make. It is difficult not to conclude that this is the interest the Government is serving. It is absolutely shameful that this is the case but I cannot see any other explanation for what it is doing when we are seeing the acceleration of the number of people who are homeless and the children and families being traumatised by it. Serious, lasting damage is being done to children and families who are particularly badly hit by this homelessness and eviction crisis. The Government should be ashamed of itself.

In support of the motion, I have to say the laissez-faire policies the Government is pursuing has led to this. If the Minister of State has read history, which I am sure he has, in the 1840s, mass evictions and mass starvation was pioneered by Sir Charles Trevelyan, a British autocrat. This time, it is being pioneered by the Minister of State's party, Fianna Fáil----

Mass starvation is being pioneered by who?. What is the Deputy saying?

----- with hands-off rent and people charging whatever they can get. The more who are evicted, the more homelessness and the bigger the demand, the higher the rents landlords can charge. It is happening, and the situation continues to get worse. In Laois, rents are sky high. Notices to quit are up, homelessness is up, house purchase prices are up, and what the Government has done is given a charter to landlords and developers. The Government's changes in rent rules have made the situation worse, screwing workers and families. I have an increasing number of constituents coming to me, as I am sure others have had, traumatised and at their wit's end. It is worse for renters, the homeless and house buyers. On top of the sharp rent increases in the past decade in Laois, of course, we have another huge jump now. The rent for a four-bedroom house has gone up by 12.5% in the past 12 months to €2,500 per month. That is what they are being advertised for. A three-bed is up 10% in the past year, with tenants now being charged almost €2,000 on average, and wait for this one: rent for a two-bedroom house has gone up a whopping 34% in one year. The Government's laissez-faire policies have allowed this to happen. Low- and middle-income workers simply cannot afford that. House prices are completely out of control and have literally gone through the roof. A standard house in Portlaoise being advertised on one estate is now €530,000. That is not the centre of London, but the centre of Portlaoise. Lack of availability of affordable homes is one of the factors driving that. Homelessness continues to increase. A shortage of homes and accommodation means that in Laois, families are being sent to Tipperary and other counties away from vital services and schools. We need urgent solutions for low- and middle-income families. We need an immediate ban on evictions of tenants who are complying with their tenancy agreements. What is wrong with that? We need an emergency ban on rent increases that are already sky high, an increase in the delivery of cost-rental homes by local authorities and not for-profit approved housing bodies so that people have secure lifetime tenancies, and reform the affordable purchase housing scheme. That needs to be reformed, along with increasing the supply of social housing. Respectfully, the Government cannot continue like this. This is getting worse.

The homeless figures for the end of March 2026 are a damning indictment of this Government and the previous Government's effort to address of the housing emergency. A record 17,517 people were living in homeless emergency accommodation, including 5,571 children, which is another shocking record. The record shows that evictions result in direct, immediate increases in homelessness figures. Quarter 4 of 2025 showed an increase of 41% in evictions, while quarter 1 of 2026 showed 7,062 eviction notices, up 51% from 6,693 in the same quarter last year. This suggests a tsunami of homelessness figures in the coming months. Eviction notices throw tenants into a highly competitive rental market, where they cannot afford to compete. The rental market is defined by enormous rents and little or no supply. The rents are huge now, with average rents in new properties being €1,744 per month nationally, while existing rents are €1,503 per month nationally. Of course, in Dublin, the figures are much higher, with €2,232 per month for newer rents. Families with children and on lower incomes will experience lifelong negative effects. As family life is impacted, schooling and health are disrupted. These homelessness figures, eviction notices and rent increases are a direct result of Government policies, including the newer rent regulations introduced by the Minister. We need emergency legislation to ban evictions and introduce a rent freeze to reduce rents, stop local authority rent increases and exclude carer's benefits from rent determination. We also need to legislate for the right of tenants to remain in situ during house sales. Emergency legislation, as the Minister of State will know, is provided for in Bunreacht na hÉireann and by precedent, which was in the Financial Emergency measures in the Public Interest Bill 2009 enacted by Fianna Fáil when it crashed the economy. Such an emergency act must also provide for a massive construction programme for affordable and social housing on public land by local authorities, and local authorities must be funded to carry out this programme.

The fact that 7,000 households across the country have been given an eviction notice in the first three months of this year is terrifying, and we do not know where they are going to go. Behind every eviction is a person or a family who is seriously at risk of homelessness because there are simply not enough houses out there for them. There is already a severe shortage and the more pressure that is put landlords to leave the market, they are leaving the market, and it is going to become unbearable. We should not be surprised because the Minister of State has been told time and time again. Instead of protecting tenants, the new rental laws introduced in March have ultimately hurt them in the long run. People are already stretched to breaking point. Every young person I talk to says ownership feels alien to them. They are not going to be able to own homes. An entire generation is reliant on rentals and now they are facing the situation where eviction will become reality. The situation in Donegal has gone beyond desperate. We already have a defective concrete crisis in Donegal, where we are trying to help tens of thousands of people to rebuild their homes. There are 35 properties in Donegal for rent today at, on average, €1,600. If we get 100 people going tomorrow and their families moving forward in the defective concrete crisis, where are they going to rent, on top of what is coming ahead? There is nowhere; the scheme grinds to a halt. Homelessness becomes normalised and that is what has happened. We are facing homelessness on an unprecedented scale and it has to be addressed and looked at as an emergency. We need to stop playing political games with it and realise that in the next year or so, 7,000 will become 10,000. That is the reality. My constituents in Donegal are facing this every day. While you are looking at filling in for a scheme and going forward with your family and 100 or 200 people go forward, where are they going to go? There is nowhere for them to rent and there is nowhere for them to go so they have to stay in their houses that are crumbling. We have been saying this time and time again and it has to be listened to. The Government needs to put emergency legislation in place. It is clear that it needs to be introduced because if it is not introduced now, the Government is going to be introducing it within the next year or two anyway. It should take control of the situation. The Minister of State is in the Government. He is in charge. We need him to stand up and be counted.

As other Deputies have referred, when the RTB published data, it confirmed a huge upsurge in evictions in the first three months of this year alone. A figure of roughly 7,000 was mentioned but in Dublin, which includes my constituency, 2,500 householders were handed notice during this period. During the debates last year and at the very start of this year, the Government's argument was that allowing landlords to reset the vacant properties to the new full market rates was necessary, especially to try and attract institutional investors and, to a lesser extent, keep smaller landlords in the market. I agree with keeping smaller landlords in the market but there has been an over-reliance on institutional investors. Ultimately, the crisis will be solved by increasing the overall supply of rental accommodation. I disagreed at the time with this argument and now we have this glaring loophole because landlords can reset the rent for vacant properties to the full market rates using this overcrowding clause to bypass tenant protections. Ordinary families across Dublin and the country have done nothing except have a family member return or have a child and they are being legally forced out. Average rents have surpassed €2,300 a month and emergency accommodation has also been maxed out. The Minister has to support legislative amendments to close this loophole and we need to focus on helping hard-pressed people by introducing a rent freeze immediately.

I have been in the House for over ten years and in that ten years, the Government has got it wrong. That is the bottom line. It does not matter where it is; whether it is urban or rural, the Government has got it all wrong in relation to housing and the crisis has gone from bad to worse. I hear a lot of Opposition Members shouting and attacking developers. I would not be in that attacking mode at all about the people who build the houses in the first place because we would not have the houses without them. There is no point in attacking the developers. We have to look at where we can put it right. I look at different things like county development plans. A lot of Members said they have been canvassing. I have certainly been canvassing over the past few weeks down in Galway West. We are talking to the people there. The biggest issue on the door is the cost of living. That is coming up quite a lot but so is housing. People are upset, with a mother or father telling me their children had to go, not because they wanted to go but they had no choice. They would never get a home no matter how long they lived here. Even buying one is out of their reach, as is building a house. That is the thing that hurts most. For a lot of those people, it hurts them to think that their children were forced out of a country that has not really equipped itself or that has not got a real grip or understanding of the real crisis that is here. The Minister of State knows as well as I do that, down in west Cork, people come to him the same as myself who do not have a house. They are being evicted. They are upset and have concerns. It does not matter if it is a single mother or father or a couple. It affects everybody and it hurts deep. The difficulty is to try to find a home for those people. These difficulties are exacerbated because our bigger cities are bursting at the seams whereas some of our towns could take a lot of those pressures. County development plans, as they come before the people, are no longer councillor-led. They are dictated from the top. People end up getting very little chance of coming to live in areas such as mine in west Cork. Wastewater treatment plants are bursting at the seams and water systems are inadequate and cannot feed homes. People look for planning permission, whether it is one or two houses or whatever. If a developer looks for five or six, he cannot get it and he may be willing to move them on. If local people are looking for planning permission, they are being refused. From the day I was elected, there has always been a difficulty for somebody in getting planning permission. It was an absolute crisis for many people. One person in my own constituency even spent €10,000 and was refused. They spent that astonishing amount. I recall about 30 years ago, for €22,000, I had a house built with a garage next to it. Now I would hardly get off the ground with that. The bottom line is that it is difficult but it is not been made any easier. We are not concentrating on solutions. There are solutions out there and they need to be looked at going forward.

How many people are living at home with their parents? That gives the Minister of State the answer, does it not? How many people today, with their families, are living at home with their parents? I know my children and their partners are. They are living with me. I am a building contractor. For them to be able to afford to build their own house is not viable because of inflation. They are saving hard but as hard as they can save, inflation is passing out what they can save. Those are the people who want to build their own houses. We came on to the modular houses and we said to allow people to put in a modular unit at the back of their own house. It would allow the parents, if they wanted to, to downsize, or a couple to come in behind their own house. The Government still has not finished that legislation. It is now waiting for the Department of the environment to fix it. It still is not done. We were talking about it last year and the Government still has not got it sorted this year for people who are trying to help their own children. How many people in local authority houses have their children and partner staying with them? What happens when people move into a local authority house and they are paying rent? It is based on the income coming into the house. The Government cannot provide a house for them but it will charge them rent in an overcrowding situation. That is what it has done. What could the Government do to relieve the? Why are there so many landlords leaving the market? How can we stop this in the interim to help the next generation? What the Government could do is the same thing it did for the Ukrainians, which is to drop the rents to a certain price where there would be no tax, halving the rent. That is what it could do, and let people provide houses. Anyone who is charging rent in a household - a landlord or whatever - and they are raising their prices, 40% to 50% of it is tax. Why are we giving the tax when the Government cannot provide a home? The Government has no solutions; its only solution is tax, and that tax is added on for every renter in this country. That is the Minister of State's fault and the Government's fault. That is why we have the situation we have today. They have no business mind for how to tackle situations. All they know is about inflation because when something goes up they get extra tax. What do they do with it? They squander it. There is no accountability for the taxpayers' money in this country because they do not know what to do with it. If you make a bags of it in the Department and you spend millions of euro in an overspend, what do they do? They reward you. Who suffers? Every person in this country that works. That is who suffers. The Government wants to learn. Listen to people that know. The Government's advisers do not know and that is what is putting this country in the situation it is in today.

This week I spoke to a family from County Wicklow. The parents are Ciaran and Jessie Redmond. Their daughter was recently diagnosed with leukaemia. They are facing eviction. They were both self-employed, hard-working parents doing the best they can for their family. Unfortunately, Ciaran has been forced into taking some leave from his work to care for his daughter. They do not qualify for any support. They were offered emergency accommodation. Imagine caring for your child with leukaemia and living in emergency accommodation. A hard-working family who did everything right, a family with both self-employed parents, and they have been told by the Government to go to homeless accommodation. That is what is happening right across the country. This is Ireland in 2026 - too rich for social housing and too poor to survive in the private rental sector. That is what the Government's housing policies have done. In County Mayo, where evictions are spiralling out of control, the social housing support threshold is €30,000. Let us imagine trying to run a household, pay bills, pay rent and run a car on €30,000. Once upon a time, homelessness was associated with complex problems like addiction and so on. We are facing a new wave of homelessness and a new face of homelessness. That face is hard-working people. That face is the working poor. That is what the Government's policies have done. I see it every week in my constituency. The frightening thing is that most of the people who I have spoken to in my clinics across Mayo have never availed of any social supports in their lives. They are almost embarrassed to outline the situation. It is not those people who should be embarrassed; it is the Government. It has utterly failed housing. We could build housing in the 1930s and 1940s. Today we cannot because it is a cost crisis. The Government has allowed building inflation to spiral out of control. It has done almost nothing to alleviate this major difficulty. The legislation introduced last March made it even worse. I stood here in the Dáil before the vote and warned and urged the Minister to reconsider. I actually warned the Minister that this legislation would become known as the flight of the small landlord. It would lead to an avalanche of evictions. As night follows day, that is what has happened. Eviction notices have increased by 50%, reaching 7,000 evictions in the first three months of 2026. The reality when we break into those numbers is that 60% of all those are exiting the market.

This Government's housing policy is not just a failure; it is outright betrayal of the Irish people. While Irish families are sleeping in their cars, or if they are lucky enough, in emergency accommodation, this Government has spent €9.2 million of taxpayers' money on accommodation for asylum seekers. Dozens and dozens of properties bought, no problem at all. That is real homes, real apartments and real three-bed houses being handed over to people who arrive here, often with no valid ID, no legitimate claim to asylum and many coming from safe countries. They are the facts. Meanwhile our own citizens, Irish families, are left begging for emergency accommodation that simply that does not exist. I have seen this first hand in my own constituency of Offaly. I have exposed this scandal through my parliamentary questions. The State is deliberately prioritising non-nationals over its own people, many of them who should not be here at all. This is madness. This is discrimination against Irish citizens in their own country. It gets worse. The Government's new rules on tenancy rights, the residential tenancies (amendment) legislation, is driving small property landlords out of the market in droves. I warned about this in the Chamber before and I called for a review. It is State control of private assets. These punitive measures attack property rights, punish responsible property owners and drastically reduce the supply of rental homes. The result is more Irish families displaced, more pressure on a broken system and more emergency accommodation that this Government then fills with asylum seekers instead of our own homeless citizens. This is not just a housing crisis; this is a crisis of priorities and disconnect. We cannot continue down this path. The Irish people will not tolerate it any longer. It is time to put Irish citizens first in housing, welfare and every single policy of this State. We have had enough. Rehouse our own people before anyone else. That is basic decency and, more importantly, that is common sense.

I thank Sinn Féin for this very important motion. I was against the rule the Minister brought in a number of months ago from 1 March that people would have to rent their houses out for six years. The news that was coming drove many people out of the market. Since some time early last year, many people have come to me who were after getting their notice to quit and their hearts were broken because they did not know where to go. It was hurtful. That was the reason. I voted against that because I feel very strongly about democratic rights. I always believed that if someone owns a house, if they bought it, if they got it or if their name was on the deed of it, they were entitled to do what they wanted to do with it. There is a pile of vacant houses there and I asked the Government to incentivise people to rent them rather than forcing people to do things. Incentivisation was the way to go. The Minister realises that the landlord pays 50% tax on the rent he gets. If people are renting out their houses for less than €1,000 a month, they are paying half of that back in tax. It becomes not worth their while to rent the house in situations like that. So much could be done to incentivise people to rent their houses and there are so many houses vacant. I will say it again because I do not know whether the Minister and the Minister of State are listening to me or not. If they do not, it is their own business. They do not seem to listen to this story anyway because I have asked many times before and they did not. Then there is the situation where people would build a house for themselves if they could get planning permission for it. In Kerry, many people will not get planning permission because of a rule that the planning authority goes by, this urban-generated rule that prevents them getting planning permission to put a roof over their heads. They are asking for no funding, no nothing only permission to be allowed build their houses. That is another thing that is happening. All along our national routes, the secondary routes and the national primary routes, people cannot access if they are coming out of even a public right of way that is not in the charge of Kerry County Council. They are not allowed to come out. We have asked about this several times. The former Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, put that rule in place in 2012 when he was Minister. We have asked the Government several times to rescind it and change it. We hope that it will do so with the new planning rules but I am worried because when the Government is going to do something, there are rumours that it is going to happen. These people are asking for nothing from the Government only permission to be allowed to build a house for themselves. They have their own funding and they will do it themselves. They will borrow and they are prepared to do whatever they need to do but we have been giving them no hearing for the past number of years. It is a very simple thing. To go back to renting houses, it was no bother in the world for the Government of the day to pay €600 or €800 to Ukrainians who came here. There was no problem with this. The Government had no problem paying for this but it will not do the same for its own here. I am not saying they should not have got it but the Irish people should get the very same as whoever comes here from wherever they are coming and they deserve that. In a democracy, this is what we would expect. I ask the Government to look at something like this to see if it would release some of the vacant houses all across our towns, villages and in the countryside. The Government is doing nothing to incentivise people to get into the rental market. I do not think the Minister and the Minister of State are listening but that is the way with them. They did not listen before and they will pay a higher price if they do not listen again.

The Government has lost focus completely and it is allowing itself to be led by the nose by the NGOs and whoever else makes up these nice policies. We all advised the Government not to bring in the recent legislation on private landlords, as if landlords were a dangerous club. There are some horrible landlords and I have no time for the bigger ones especially. The policy in this area is very strange too. I know of cases with regard to Waterford County Council and An Coimisiún Pleanála. In large groups of housing estates, a stipulation was put in that the first owners would have to remain in them and they could not be bought up by REITs and others. The Government laid out the red carpet for them but it did not support its own. Then it laid out the red carpet totally for the Ukrainians and for God knows who else who came from all over the world. We were called all kinds of names when we mentioned it and pointed out the mistake and foolish policy which was unsustainable. To think in Clonmel alone, 40 modular homes were built. I sat down with the OPW and the builders Sisk and the Department's integration team. I was guaranteed these modular homes, which are probably worth €80,000 at best, would be finished for €200,000 and not a penny more. We discussed everything, including site, topography, water and electricity. They have now ended up costing almost €500,000 per unit. In fact, it is €496,000. Nationally they have cost €450,000. This is an absolute travesty and a waste of money. How could any company - it was Sisk in this case - get all 11 sites in the country and get €450,000 per unit? We could build the finest house in Tipperary or any other county for €450,000. Another issue is the problem with the blocks and cement. Instead of making the big companies pay, and I will not name them but we all know who they are, including an international company which I believe has moved its headquarters and funding from the Stock Exchange here and has gone to Holland, a levy was put on every cubic metre of cement. Cement has increased by 30% this year. Oil has caused a lot of this but the Government has increased it by putting on this charge to do repairs. Rogue suppliers and bad supervision allowed this. It is an unbelievable situation. The Government now thinks there is a golden egg in the short-term lets of people who have gone into holiday homes and Airbnb. Farmers beside me did up an old house in a farmyard which they could never rent to anyone long-term because it is in an active living farmyard. A woman in Dundrum in February has the same story. She has been at it for 30 years and the property is in the middle of her farm. The Minister thinks he can force them to give these as local authority rents or for people to rent long term. It is a folly. The Minister thinks he will get back 10,000 or 20,000 of these but he is going to destroy another industry. It grew up as a cottage industry and the Minister is going to wipe it out. All of the Minister's policies seem to be trying to wipe out industries and we are being left with nothing only brus because that is the policy the Minister is bringing in. The parties on the left are clamouring to attack landlords. There are many incidental and accidental landlords who are good people. They educated their children and put them through college from having a second house they were left or inherited in some make, shape or form. They are all being classed as rogues. The RTB is useless and not fair. A bad landlord who does not repair should be brought to book but there are also tenants who wreck a house, destroy a house or do not pay rent. Somebody in my office told me the tenants forgot to pay the rent for the past four months. The RTB would normally come down on their side, or it is slow, feeble and ineffective as with most of the other regulatory bodies. They have a stamp on the wall, big seats in plush offices and board members being paid but they are not effective. They are toothless, useless and fruitless. I wished the Minister well when he took up the role. I thought he would do something pretty good. I asked the Minister to look at something that happened last week. Tipperary County Council passed a motion last Friday evening to knock 52 perfectly strong well-built houses. It is an absolute travesty in this day and age.

On a point of order, I want to register a complaint about the Minister and the Minister of State. We spoke for eight or nine minutes and they did not listen to one word that we said.

That is not a point of order.

They were talking. They are ignorant and arrogant and they will not listen but they will get their answer when they go to the doors.

That is not a point of order. If Deputy Healy-Rae has a complaint, there is a format for making it. This is not it and that is not a point of order. Please respect the Chair. If Deputy Healy-Rae has an issue with the Minister, there is a pathway for him to take it up. This is not it.

I thank the Sinn Féin Deputies for initiating the motion and I thank colleagues for their contributions to this very important debate. I acknowledge that I could not be here earlier but I was meeting Oliver Bond House residents at the Custom House, which had been arranged before this Private Members' debate. Of course I will get the transcript and read back over everything to have full knowledge of everything that has been said. I have previously acknowledged to the House that housing is the defining social and economic challenge of our time, which affects almost every family throughout the country. It has been my absolute focus since I became Minister for housing to address this crisis. It is the single greatest issue facing so many families and working people who aspire to a secure home of their own, be it to own or to rent or a social home. I recognise the strain that can be caused by the scarcity of rental accommodation and the rent pressures that accompany this. It is for this reason that the Government is laser-focused on increasing the supply of all types of homes, including social homes, rental homes and homes to purchase. Only a sustained increase in the supply of homes of all tenures can solve this problem. However, in the meantime we have to do everything we can while supply is being driven to ensure those who find themselves in a very difficult situation, whether it is paying high rent, not being able to find somewhere to rent, facing a notice to quit or finding themselves in a homeless situation, that we can help them as much as possible. I reassert the Government's commitment and determination to tackle the challenges in the housing sector. The Government's goal remains a housing system that meets the needs of everybody on the housing spectrum, whether it is with regard to a social house, affordable purchase, cost-rental, to be able to rent or to be able to purchase their own home with or without Government support. No one in government underestimates the scale of the housing challenge. We must ensure that we enhance supply as much as possible. Supply is a means to an end so that people have the home they need in their own local community. An eviction ban and a rent freeze would have a significant impact in deterring medium- and longer-term supply of rental accommodation. It would act as a disincentive to landlords who are considering entering the rental market and as a spur for existing landlords to leave. As previously stated, the latest data published by the RTB shows continued resilience in the Irish rental sector with ongoing growth in tenancies and the number of landlords. We need a supply of homes of all types and tenures in every place. We are working tirelessly to address these challenges and to implement policies that make a positive difference. While there is still much to do, the motion initiated by Sinn Féin Deputies does not fairly represent the efforts or progress made to date. It is important that I reiterate the real progress we have made in recent years, including that relating to social and affordable housing delivery, and to set out the key changes introduced and our plans ahead to scale up the supply of homes across all tenures. The record level of investment for the delivery of housing continues into 2026 with €5.2 billion in Exchequer capital funding complemented by investment through the LDA and lending from the Housing Finance Agency, bringing the total capital funding for housing in 2026 to over €9 billion. This record level of funding is supporting the delivery of social, affordable and cost-rental homes. The 2026 capital funding will be supplemented by over €2 billion in current funding to address housing needs. Between July 2020 and the end of 2025, 58,816 social homes were added to the social housing stock and more than 15,271 homes were brought back into use under the voids programme. Local authorities are delivering affordable homes, with funding approved of almost €691 million from the Affordable Housing Fund to support the delivery of over 7,650 affordable purchase and cost-rental homes by 25 local authorities. Over the past five years, almost 149,000 new homes have been delivered. This is significant progress and that needs to be recognised, but we have an awful lot more to do. The Government has implemented a range of measures in recent years to ensure a balanced housing market across all tenures, including home ownership, social and affordable housing and private rental. The recently enacted Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026 introduced a new national rent control for the first time across all tenancies, which limits rent increases to inflation as measured by the consumer price index up to a maximum of 2%. These changes were introduced to promote greater investment in the rental market and to increase the supply of rental properties, but also to give greater protection to tenants. Ireland is facing a shortage of rental homes, especially apartments. The reforms aim to encourage investment and development. It will take time for a new supply to materialise, given the nature of investment decisions and large-scale residential development. Affordability is also at the heart of Government's housing policy as embodied within our housing plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities, with the Government targeting delivery of over 300,000 homes by 2030, including 72,000 social homes and 90,000 affordable supports. The plan reinforces the range of existing measures implemented by the Government to tackle the issues of supply and affordability, thereby supporting the increased provision of new homes to purchase and to rent. Record levels of social and affordable housing delivery have been achieved in recent years. In 2025, a total of 9,089 new-build social homes were constructed. This is the highest delivery on record since the foundation of the State and is an increase of 1,256, or 16%, compared with 2024. Over 42,000 new-build social homes were delivered between 2022 and 2025. I am also providing substantial funding to local authorities, the Land Development Agency and approved housing bodies to support increased delivery. The national development plan has committed record levels of funding for new social and affordable homes. A record level of investment is being provided for the delivery of housing in 2026. Since the launch of cost rental in 2021, approximately €2.25 billion in Exchequer funding has been approved for cost-rental projects. Beyond my Department, significant funding is also being provided from the State's Housing Finance Agency. The lowering of VAT on new apartments to 9% in budget 2026 will also assist in delivering new homes into the cost-rental sector at lower costs, meaning lower rents. Of course, we know the people suffering most are those who have found themselves in homelessness as a result of not being able to get homes to live in, or as a result of facing that notice to quit and being evicted. We have record levels of preventions, but where someone does become homeless we want to make sure they exit it as quickly as possible and, while they are homeless, they are provided with the supports they need. They need more supports than just of a roof over their heads. We know about the distressing impacts of homelessness; for example, it impacts on people's social lives and on their mental health. One person homeless is one too many. The numbers we have in homelessness are unacceptable to me. Housing delivery at the scale and pace we require is not something the Government can achieve alone. Nor is it something that any one sector, agency or profession can deliver in isolation. It depends on partnership between central and local government; between the public and private sectors; and between planners, developers, infrastructure providers, financers and communities themselves so we can deliver the homes we need right across this country. Achieving the delivery of 300,000 new homes under Delivering Homes, Building Communities requires an estimated €20 billion of development finance per year. As we all recognise, that level of investment is being sought in a highly competitive international market. While the Government is providing record funding, we cannot provide every piece of funding required to deliver every home. We have to deliver schools, hospitals and roads. We have to create that investment as well in other parts of the public sector that need that support for our local communities. One of the key challenges identified is apartment viability. As part of Delivering Homes, Building Communities, the Government has introduced a suite of complementary measures, including the introduction of a 9% VAT rate on the sale of apartments that could reduce the delivery cost of those apartments. A fourth call for expressions of interest under the Croí Cónaithe cities scheme, which provides affordable purchase apartments, was issued in July of last year and the scheme is helping to activate the thousands of planning permissions for apartments in our cities. The Housing Activation Office was established last year to accelerate home building by unblocking infrastructure delays and by co-ordinating investment in servicing zoned land. This office supports public infrastructure planning and investment for the delivery of new sustainable communities and transport-orientated development. The office, which is headed by a new deputy secretary general for housing activation, has undertaken both formal and informal engagement with various stakeholders, local authorities, agencies and the private sector to ensure we are all co-ordinated in maximising the delivery of homes across this country. I apologise for not being here earlier, but it was due to a pre-existing engagement with those residents from Oliver Bond House.

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for his work on this Private Members' business. The figures published by the RTB last week are beyond staggering. They are grim and show the highest level of eviction notices since the Famine. I do not know if the Minister fully realises the gravity of the housing crisis. A 51% rise in eviction notices means thousands of people across Ireland find themselves in the horrible position of trying to find a new home. If they are lucky enough to find a place, they will undoubtedly be paying far higher rents than they did before. If they do not, they will be forced to move back in with parents, to emigrate or, worse still, into homelessness. The impact this is having on Irish society cannot be understated. There is a whole generation out there being forced to put their lives on hold, couples who want to start a family and three or four generations living under one roof. Let me be clear. This crisis has happened on the Minister's watch. Not only that, but it has radically worsened on his watch. His blind faith that the market will provide has ensured one thing and one thing only - sky-high profits for developers and shareholders. Rent in Kilkenny and Carlow for new tenancies has hit €1,500 per month. I mentioned the Famine. It is a famine situation in a lot of houses because they cannot afford the rents, and they definitely cannot afford to eat. We have St. Vincent de Paul and others in our communities helping them out. Enough is enough. When will working families finally get a break? We need an end to empty rhetoric from this Government and a genuine commitment to accelerate the delivery of social homes, genuine affordable homes and private homes for purchase.

I listened carefully to what the Minister said in his speech. One of the saddest things is that he actually believes what he read out. The figures announced recently of 7,062 eviction notices across the State show a 51% increase on the same time last year. This will come as no surprise to many of us because we predicted this was going to happen. In Limerick we have had 354 evictions in quarter 1 of 2026, and 269 were issued in quarter 4 of 2025. That is 623 in a six-month period. These are not just numbers but families. These are people who were renting for years and thought they had some kind of security. Some of these eviction notices are spurious because the landlords will be offering the places for rent on daft.ie in a couple of months. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. Anybody who runs a constituency office dreads opening their clinics at the moment because coming in the door are people with the dreaded notices to quit in their hands. What do we do in Limerick? We refer them to the homeless action team. What does the homeless action team do? It tells people there is nothing it can do for them until about a week before they are going to be homeless and probably nothing it can do at the end of that week. The Minister's Government has caused this crisis and it has no plans to get us out of this mess. It has abandoned working families, because the bulk of people I have dealt with who have lost their accommodation and been evicted from their homes are working families with nowhere to go. We told the Minister that was going to happen when he brought in his new Bill. The copies of the Minister's speech we were given finish with "We will continue to listen to feedback and seek ways to improve". We have been giving the Government ideas, solutions and stuff over the years but none of it has been accepted. I will mention one thing quickly. There are always 200 voids in Limerick city. The Government will not change the way it is done and there will always be 200 voids on the Minister's watch, so the sooner his Government is gone, the better.

I am going to call this out for what it is, which is an abject failure of renters the length and breadth of this State. The Government's amendment is absolutely tone-deaf. It is the most layered piece of political spin I have ever seen put on paper. There have been 7,000 eviction notices in just three months, which is the highest number ever recorded. Thousands of families are living in fear and panic as they wonder where exactly they are going to go. What does the Minister do? He comes in with an amendment that reads like it was written by the investment funds rather than a Government presiding over record rents, record evictions and record homelessness and an entire generation locked out of the hope of ever owning their own home. The Government congratulates itself on rent controls while rent in Westmeath has soared by over 11%. Perhaps the most disgraceful part of it is the attempt to downplay the soaring evictions by claiming the trend is moderating. I ask the Minister to come to my constituency and talk to the 84-year-old man, talk to the new mother with a two-week-old baby who is in emergency accommodation and talk to the woman who is effectively overholding in a domestic violence refuge with her two kids with additional needs. They were meant to be out yesterday but there is nowhere for her to go. Literally nothing is available to her. The Minister is completely detached from the reality facing ordinary people. He measures success as investor confidence and market activity but ordinary people measure success by having a roof over their heads and food on the table. That is the level of pressure families are under. Forget about the holiday. Forget about the car. They just want a roof. They just want to be able to afford the rent and put food on the table for their families, and lord knows they work hard enough to be able to afford those very basic things. Then the Minister has the audacity to tell people his housing policy is working. He should stand in any local authority building and look at the people presenting as homeless. They are countless and they come from all sectors of society. This Government has failed each and every one of them and the Minister should be ashamed for standing in here and trying to tell us his broken policy is working and he should be ashamed for every person who is standing in a homeless queue.

When the Minister made his announcement last summer about the intended changes to the regulation of the rental sector two things happened. The first is that every quarter since July there has been a dramatic increase in eviction notices. In July, August and September it was a 38% increase. In October, November and December it was 41%. In the most recent figures it was 51%. That is the direct consequence of the policy decisions the Minister and his colleagues in the Government have made. During that whole period rents continued to rise so the Minister knows what is going to happen when we get both the Daft and RTB data from 1 March. He knows we are going to be moving back into double-digit rental inflation, first in some cities and then State-wide. That means there will be thousands of additional people looking for rental accommodation at a time when the rate of rental inflation is going through the roof. We are back to 2014, 2015 and 2016. That is what the Minister has done. He is telling people he is doing that so at some distant point in future there may be supply they may be able to afford, but what we are trying to highlight to him, and what the RTB data and soon-to-be-published Daft.ie data will tell him is right now there are real-world consequences to the decisions he has made impacting upon thousands upon thousands of people. No doubt some of those people will get new tenancies but they will be pushed into ever-greater financial hardship. The ones who cannot get tenancies will be forced to move back home with their parents, forced to emigrate or forced to present for emergency homeless accommodation. It is likely that the consequence of this will be that homeless presentations will continue to trend steadily upwards. The Minister is doing all that on a promise that we might get increased rental accommodation in the form of high-density, high-cost rental developments in very specific parts of the State. They will not be in the Minister’s county or in the counties of the majority of TDs. That strategy is not going to work. In the meantime, the decisions he is making are in real time punishing renters for his housing policy failures. All the while the Minister is not meeting his social housing targets. He can make all the comparisons he wants with the 1970s but we have twice the population now we had then and the level of social housing need is far greater. The State would need to double social housing output on its current level to come anywhere close to meeting the level of need. The housing targets the Minister is meeting the least are his affordable housing targets. He is so far off and the vast majority of the units still are not affordable and the private sector still is not delivering enough private homes for working people to buy, again because the Minister’s activation measures are not working or are not the right choices. We have set out a set of alternatives. We did not expect the Minister to support it but if these trends continue and the number of people who are being harmed because of the policies he is implementing continues to grow, at what point will he say enough is enough? Will it be after six months, 12 months or two years? Until he accepts that, we will continue to highlight his errors and to put forward alternatives. That is why I commend this motion to the House.

In accordance with Standing Order 85(2), the division is postponed until the weekly division time on Wednesday, 20 May 2026.