There was more grim news this week for the thousands of people desperate to find a secure and affordable home. House prices are now higher than the Celtic tiger peak yet the Government's building targets remain too low. It is four months since the Taoiseach admitted to me in Leaders’ Questions that more ambition would be needed. Instead of Housing for All, it seems we are still stuck with housing just for some.

Those struggling to find an affordable home to rent must continue to compete with short-term tourist lettings. It is five years since the Oireachtas first debated a Labour Bill to regulate Airbnb-style lets. Now we understand that the European Commission is still delaying a decision on the Government's proposal to do just that. The Government needs to remind the Commission how dire the housing crisis is here and let it know of the urgency. We cannot afford to wait any longer for EU proposals. For years, we have called for stronger regulation of short-term letting. We know how many homes these platforms take out of use because, during the pandemic, suddenly they all became available. That situation has now been allowed to worsen again. "Building back better" post Covid has made its way out of the lexicon. Instead, prospective buyers and renters are being victimised by a profit-driven market, and laissez-faire policies in the Department of housing.

Renters in Ireland are still at the whim of landlords. There has been no tangible strengthening of renters' rights since the general election. No-fault evictions are still taking place, even though we in Labour proposed a Bill to stop them. While inspections in the private rented sector have gone up since the pandemic, enforcement is practically non-existent in many areas. Not a single prohibition notice was issued in ten local authority areas last year.

Homelessness figures will be out tomorrow, and no one is under any illusion that there will be good news this month. Every day, across the country, tenants live in fear of the dreaded call to tell them they will be losing their home. It is a Wild West for renters out there. Just ask any of the tenants of Marc Godart. I give credit to The Irish Times for pulling back the veil on what is really going on for renters in the properties of this Luxembourg investor. Godart has deployed CCTV to monitor his tenants, is accused of unlawful evictions, has failed to pay compensation to former tenants who won at the RTB and has summarily fired his workers. We hear about ruthless working conditions for those who work for him.

The latest documents revealed by The Irish Times show that he is now trying to recruit people to act as fronts for his property empire - getting others to use their identities to set up Airbnb accounts. Across a range of legal frameworks, he is riding roughshod over the rights of tenants and workers, and he appears to be operating with impunity. This is very serious. Yesterday, he avoided prosecution for breaches of planning laws. His companies were fined just €7,500 but that’s probably only a few days' takings in some of his city-centre Airbnb properties. Are we going to continue to allow unscrupulous landlords to exploit legal loopholes and to exploit renters, many of whom are desperate for a roof over their heads? He also exploits workers, it seems. When will short-term lets be regulated? How will the Government tackle egregious abuses of the law by a small number of unscrupulous landlords like Godart?

I thank the Deputy for raising a number of issues under the umbrella of renting and so on. It is not true to say that no additional protections have been put in place for renters. We have introduced quite a significant number of protections. For example, we have extended the length of notice landlords are obliged to give. The Deputy is correct in what she said about short-term tourist letting. It is frustrating that the Commission has sought further time to review the short-term tourism letting legislation which would provide a statutory basis for the establishment of the STTL register. As the Deputy will know, in November the Parliament and the Council reached a provisional political agreement on the EU STR proposal. Those issues are still with the Commission. We have also introduced a €750 rent credit. That has been taken up by a substantial number of renters, but not all renters. That is something that also needs to be explored.

I also pay tribute to Naomi O'Leary and The Irish Times for a very comprehensive investigative analytical piece on Marc Godart. It is extremely concerning. I have read the article and I intend to talk to other Ministers about it, but it seems to me that the Corporate Enforcement Authority should be interested in the article, particularly the issues of nominees, paper directors, shadow Airbnb accounts and ruthless staff practices. From reading that article, it seems to me that issues relating to labour law also arise. There may be a role for the WRC or labour inspectors to investigate how employees of that company were treated. We have read about arbitrary deductions of salary, arbitrary firings of people, supervisors being directed to make sure employees work out the week or month even as they are being fired. Some of them came from South America, for example, with no English language capacity. They have been told it is not enough.

Their only crime was to allow inspectors from Dublin City Council to go in to inspect premises. A person got fired for facilitating an inspection by Dublin City Council. I regard that as very serious. From my reading of it, a range of authorities were affected. These were environmental health officers who went on that occasion. They found they could not enforce because no one was occupying the property.

The Corporate Enforcement Authority should be interested. From a layperson's reading of this, clearly at a surface reading employment law breaches need to be highlighted. In terms of the city council's role and potentially other authorities, I am conscious of my restrictions in parliamentary terms. I want to stay within those restrictions and I will adhere to that.

I thank the Tánaiste for his comments. I commend Naomi O'Leary. Her article makes for chilling reading. Undoubtedly, there are issues with the arbitrary deductions from workers wages and workplace practices.

To return to the issue of Godart's treatment of his tenants, what is the Government going to do to ensure unscrupulous landlords like Godart will be made accountable and that there would be some comeback? Clearly, neither local authorities nor the Residential Tenancies Board currently have the power or capacity to regulate the undoubtedly small number of egregious abuses in the rental sector. Will the Tánaiste bolster the RTB to crack down on those who are exploiting tenants? Clearly, they are not representative of the vast majority of landlords, but right now, the RTB investigations and sanctions unit can only levy fines of up to €15,000. That is not enough to deal people like Godart. In the nineties, we saw how the Labour Party Minister for Finance, Ruairí Quinn, created the Criminal Assets Bureau to go after the assets of criminals, seizing property and going after ill-gotten cash. We now need an enforcement mechanism within the RTB with real powers to go after the small number of unscrupulous landlords who are making life a misery for far too many. Reading Naomi O'Leary's piece, all of us will recall that these are practices from 19th century Land League times. This was why the Land League was set up, calling for fair rent, fixity of tenure and decent conditions for renters. We are seeing some appalling conditions still prevailing for renters in Dublin and across the country today.

There are two points here. First of all, Naomi O'Leary's article on Marc Godart is shocking. I identified the list of authorities for whom the content of that article and his behaviour should be a matter of interest. I would add the Garda to that potentially. If the law is broken, it is broken. There are enforcement mechanisms to enforce the law and we have invested record amounts in the RTB. There is €13.4 million for the RTB in 2024 and €10.75 million for local authority inspections in the rental sector and for the regulation of short-term lettings. The rent laws are there and set out very clear requirements and obligations on landlords which the RTB can investigate and enforce. I do not think the investigations or enforcement are at the scale they should be given the overall numbers. This creates a huge challenge reputationally for the broader rental market when there are people like Mr. Godart behaving in a manner that he clearly has behaved in, as evidenced by the article in The Irish Times. We have enforcement authorities to enforce the law when it is broken and they should give their attention to this.