I call Deputy Paul Murphy.

On the North Circular Road there is a building with 16 families living in apartments. Many young children are living there, looking forward to Santa coming, but before Christmas all those families have been issued with notices to quit. The landlord is not a small accidental landlord but a businessman with multiple properties. Yesterday, he told the tenants they were great tenants but said the market dictates the rent. The ground for eviction is the supposed need for substantial refurbishment. In reality, the tenants and the landlord know - I presume everyone here knows this and has seen it happen time and again - that this is yet another renoviction, something that deserves a word for itself now because it is so widespread, with the need for refurbishment used as a pretext to kick out tenants and hike up rents.

If these tenants are evicted, they will mostly be evicted into homelessness. The Dublin Renters' Union and Solidarity have been assisting them in preparing to oppose any evictions. The Anti-Evictions Bill, which we will debate tonight and vote on tomorrow, would stop evictions like this taking place. Every Deputy will have a choice to take the side of landlords like that or take the side of the tenants. The vast majority of homelessness is being caused by evictions from the private rented sector and that is just the sharpest end of the conditions that face tenants.

Since the Government took office, rents in cities have increased by more than 30%. Average rent nationally is more than €1,300 a month and when combined with low pay and precarity, one in seven tenants now faces consistent poverty. The picture, unfortunately, was similar two years ago in January 2017 when we moved our previous Anti-Evictions Bill. That Bill was defeated by the casting vote of the Ceann Comhairle. It would have been passed were it not for the votes of the many landlords in this Dáil who voted against it. If it had been implemented then, 2,000 families who faced eviction in 2017 on the grounds of sale of property would have been protected.

The Taoiseach's Government voted against that Bill. Two years on, with landlords continuing to use grounds of sale and renovation to evict tenants, will the Government vote against an anti-evictions Bill again? Will Fianna Fáil sit on the fence and abstain again? At the very least, does the Taoiseach agree that the one in four Deputies who are landlords should recuse themselves from voting on this Bill because of a clear conflict of interest? That conflict of interest goes much deeper, of course, than their personal status as landlords. It is related to the commitment of the establishment parties to the capitalist system and the free market in housing, which allows landlords to profit massively from a crisis facing tenants and others. It means that tenants such as those on the North Circular Road and all those affected by the housing crisis have no choice but to organise for a ban on evictions, proper rent controls and the building of public and genuinely affordable housing.

I have no doubt that all Members are able to make a distinction between their personal interests and the public interest and that applies as much to people who are members of trade unions who might vote on employment legislation, employers who might vote on employment legislation and all of us here who are taxpayers voting on tax legislation. Members are able to make the distinction between what is a personal interest and what is a public interest and we all act in the public interest.

I am not familiar with the particular building about which the Deputy spoke but I acknowledge we need to act once again to strengthen tenants' rights. Hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland rent the properties in which they live and we have strengthened their rights in recent years, but we need to take further actions, particularly to deal with landlords who abuse the renovation provisions to empty properties and jack-up rents.

The rent Bill, providing additional rights to renters and tenants, was approved by Cabinet yesterday. It has four major provisions: first, the introduction of a rent register so that people can see what rents are being charged in the area in which they live; second, extending the notice-to-quit period so that people who are asked to leave the house that they are renting get much more time to find a new place to rent; third, a legal definition of "substantial renovation" to end renovictions and bogus renovations such as the ones the Deputy described; and, fourth, additional powers for the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, to enforce existing laws and these new laws. This is legislation the Government is bringing forward and I sincerely hope the Deputy’s party will vote for it. I would welcome an indication from him as to whether he will do so.

I asked for an indication from the Taoiseach about a Bill we will debate later. Perhaps we could get that first and when the Government publishes its Bill, we will respond to it. Our Bill proposes to ban evictions on the grounds of sale which would mean, as is the case in many European countries, that sale would have to take place with tenants in situ. It would ban evictions on the grounds of renovations. In the case of a landlord saying he or she has to evict because he or she or a family member is moving in, six months' rent would have to be paid in compensation. Those are the kind of measures needed to guarantee the rights and circumstances of tenants.

On the question of personal interest versus public interest, does the Taoiseach not see it as significant that 4% of people in society as a whole are landlords? In this House, and within the Cabinet, 25% are landlords. Landlords are massively over-represented here. That is not just a question of personal interest and motivation, although one would be blind to believe those factors do not affect people, but it is a question of ideology. This Government is a landlords’ Government. It is the reason it passed a landlords’ budget, and the reason it pays lipservice to the idea of tenants and the reason I suspect, despite the Taoiseach saying he has not seen the Bill yet, that it will oppose it.

The Taoiseach will allow families such as those on North Circular Road to continue to face homelessness and he will turn a blind eye to it while the profits of landlords shoot through the roof.

We think the Deputy's Bill is too extreme and designed more for publicity than policy as is so often-----

A minute ago, the Taoiseach said he had not read it yet.

I did not say that. As is so often the case with things brought forward by People Before Profit and Solidarity-----

Every homeless organisation has called for this.

-----it is too extreme.

It is not extreme.

Some landlords are abusive and bad but most landlords are just people renting out a property that they own, providing somewhere for people to live and we should not demonise landlords-----

They must be very extreme in Germany and most of Europe.

-----because we need people to rent out their properties. A reason that we are facing the problem we currently face is lack of supply. People are not willing to enter the rental market any more to rent out properties or people are selling up because they do not want to be landlords any more. We have to bear that in mind and balance the rights of tenants with the rights of landlords. Legislation that states that somebody cannot move back into the house that he or she owns-----

That person can but has to compensate.

It does not say that.

The legislation affects a property one bought ten or 20 years ago to accommodate one's kid in college, and states that one cannot live in a house that one owns-----

It does not say that.

-----and that one cannot accommodate one's own family in a house that one owns.

It states that one cannot move people out and leave them homeless.

The Taoiseach is totally disingenuous.

It does not say that.

If one is forced to sell the property and needs the money for some other reason, perhaps to pay medical bills for a relative, the fact that one cannot sell it is too extreme.

One can sell it with the tenant.

We will do four things. We will legislate for a rent register so that people know the rents being paid by others in their area; we will extend the notices to quit so that people have more time to find a new home to live in or rent; we will properly define in law what substantial renovation is or is not; and we will strengthen the powers of enforcement for the Residential Tenancies Board.

What about affordable housing?

I guarantee that the left wing forces in this House will vote against those protections.

I call Deputy Pringle.

Why would we do that?

Will Solidarity-People Before Profit vote for our Bill or not? The Deputies will not say.

We have had that question. Can we go ahead with Deputy Pringle's, please?