Private rents have hit their highest level in 25 years according to the latest Daft.ie rent report. That is courtesy of the Government’s rent hike Bill. Since the Government’s residential tenancies Act and market rent reset, landlords have been able to hike up rents to the highest possible market rate regardless of what they were before. That means that this quarter, average rent hikes have jumped a staggering 7.8% in just three months. That is the highest quarterly rent increase since 2002. In Dublin, a two-bedroom apartment now costs an average of €2,536 a month. That would cost over €30,000 a year to rent. All that goes into the pockets of investors and developers and is going to lead to emigration and homelessness. That is the reality. A family would need a six-figure income in order to afford rent on an average apartment but, unfortunately, a six-figure income is far from the average income of families in this city. In new-build developments like the Glass Bottle site, rents were already unaffordable. For the vast majority of ordinary working tenants, they will be even more unaffordable and out of reach. This is a direct result of the Government’s decision to allow landlords to reset rents between tenancies, a decision that Sinn Féin completely opposed, including here in the Seanad. The Bill was guillotined. We urged the Government not to do that but, as always, it refused to listen.

It knowingly and willingly pushed rental inflation to its highest level in a quarter of a century with the false promise that it would somehow bring down rents.

The solution to the housing crisis is not going to be found in punishing renters and tenants for decades of failed government policy and it will not be found by cosying up to foreign speculators and developers whose only interests are delivering a profit for their shareholders. The only solution will be for this Government to turn this disastrous approach around by instituting an immediate rent freeze and eviction ban and accelerating the delivery of social and genuinely affordable homes. I ask the Minister to come into this House and explain how he is going to make homes affordable for ordinary workers.