Paul Murphy: Calls it the 'Raise the Rent' Bill, Predicts Eviction Surge
Paul Murphy spoke in the Dáil to denounce a government bill he said will raise rents and drive evictions. He argued the bill benefits landlords and institutional investors, would cost the average renter more than €3,000 extra a year, and urged landlord TDs to recuse themselves.
Main accusation
Murphy said the bill should be called the "raise the rent" bill and accused the government of acting as a landlord's government that represents big landlords and institutional investors rather than renters.
Projected financial impact
He warned the legislation would push rents up faster, estimating it would cost the average renter more than €3,000 extra a year and described the outcome as a massive transfer of wealth from poorer people and the public to wealthy landlords and corporations.
Eviction warning and historical comparison
Murphy argued evictions will soar from an already-high level, saying current evictions are proportionate to those in 1850s Ireland and warning that such a trend previously led to the land war.
Conflict of interest among TDs
He highlighted that a large share of TDs are landlords—saying about a third of government TDs are landlords and that 20% of TDs stood to personally benefit from the vote—and appealed to landlord TDs to recuse themselves from the vote as a matter of probity.
Lobbying, process concerns and political response
Murphy alleged the landlord lobby IPOA provided amendments that TDs copied, naming Independent Ireland and Gillian O'Toole as recipients of the same lobby emails, and framed this as evidence the government prioritises landlord interests. He called for building a street and community movement to resist rent increases and evictions and said the government must be removed for failing to end the housing crisis.
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this bill should be called the raise the rent bill. The purpose of the bill is to raise people's rents. That's literally it. You like to pretend that there's some greater, deeper meaning going on. You like to talk about security of tenure. But the purpose, the objective of this bill is to raise people's rents. People's rents have already about doubled. In the past 10 years, but the government thinks that for the people they represent, the big landlords, so-called institutional investors, the rents aren't rising fast enough. So we're going to introduce this bill to raise the rents even faster to cost the average renter more than €3,000 extra a year. That's the purpose of this bill. It's the objective of this bill, and it's going to be the consequence of this bill. You're going to run this bill through. You're going to guillotine it tonight. You're going to shut down the debate in this house tonight. And the consequence is people's rents are going to rise. What does that look like? It's a massive further transfer of wealth from some of the poorest people in the country to some of the richest people and richest corporations in the country who are already making plenty of money from their very many rental properties. That's one impact. Another impact is that evictions are going to soar. And evictions are going to soar not from a low point, but from a high point. Evictions are already at the same level proportionately as they were in the 1850s in Ireland. 1850s in Ireland. Do you know what came after that amount of evictions in Ireland in the 1850s? What came after that was the land war, because people simply had enough. And I think that's going to come after now for the government as well. And people may ask the question, this doesn't make any sense. They haven't presented any of the evidence to show what's going to happen, how this is magically going to translate into supply. All the experts are saying this isn't working. Should the government talk day in, day out about listening to the hardworking people, listening, looking out for renters and so on. So why on earth are they bringing in a bill that is going to rapidly increase people's rents? And the answer is very simple. If it walks like a duck, if it swims like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, well then it is probably a duck. So it's a landlord's government. That's the bottom line truth of it. We have a government that is interested in representing the views and the material interests of big landlords. About a third of government TDs literally are landlords, but the rest of them represent them very effectively in any case, because ideologically they're committed to this idea that the market has to solve things. We have triple down, trickle down economics and then coincidentally all the policies that are supposedly great and are going to resolve the housing crisis that they've been doing for 10 years and have resulted in the housing crisis getting worse and worse and worse. But just a happy coincidence of all of that is that there's a big transfer of wealth from the public, from the state, from taxpayers' money to landlords and from renters to landlords. That's the essence of it. We have a landlord's government that represents the interests of a tiny minority that are landlords, an even smaller minority that are big landlords in this country, as opposed to all of those who are affected by the housing crisis. The fundamental point is that the government represents those not who suffer from the housing crisis, but those who profit from the housing crisis. Why does the government keep introducing policies that make the housing crisis worse and worse and worse? Well, it's time to draw to the conclusion that they don't care about ending the housing crisis. If the housing crisis ended, well then their friends, the developers, the big landlords wouldn't be able to make the sort of money that they're currently able to make. That's the fundamental point. And that's why we need to get rid of this government as soon as we can. And it's why we need to be building a movement on the streets, in communities, to resist these rent increases, to resist the evictions that are going to flow from it and to massively apply pressure on the government on these issues. I do want to raise a point about landlords in this Dáil. I mean, I think it's shocking. It's shocking that 20% of TDs in the Dáil are going to vote tonight on legislation that is personally going to benefit them. If you're a landlord and you vote in the Dáil tonight to pass this legislation, you're going to personally benefit, on average, to the tune of about €3,000. I think it's shocking that that is allowed in the first place and secondly, that those TDs affected wouldn't put their hands up and say, look, maybe I personally agree with this, maybe I personally agree with this, but I'm personally affected by this, I'm going to recuse myself from the vote. And even at this late stage, I would appeal on landlord TDs not to participate in this vote tonight. It's utterly wrong that landlords who personally benefit from the increasing of rents are going to get to vote on this, would personally benefit from it, with such a devastating effect for so many people. I also would make the point, I mean, in general we have a landlord's government with plenty of landlord TDs, but it's kind of, it's a bit much that literally the landlord's lobbying organisation wrote amendments for TDs and the TDs literally copied and pasted the landlord amendments and submitted them. This is the democratic process that Independent Ireland, Gillian O'Toole, literally got the same email that the rest of us got from the IPOA, the landlord's lobby organisation, saying, please put in these amendments on behalf of landlords. And Independent Ireland said, yes, sir, we represent the landlords, we submit the amendments. It's very, very blatant and it shows you, you know, don't let anyone fall for the idea of Independent Ireland representing the common man or woman, no such thing. They represent the landlords very, very explicitly. The landlord lobby says, we want these amendments, Independent Ireland says, yes, sure, we'll put them in immediately. And people should be aware of that. I want to raise a particular point about the impact of this in terms of HAP, the point has been made about the HAP levels. The other point in relation to that is, for very many HAP tenants across the country, effectively you have a double rent increase taking place. Councils across the country are hiking council rents. In many, Dublin City, for example, has voted to do it and is due to implement it from April. I know Galway has done it. I know other councils across the country in South Dublin County Council, it looks like they're trying to go for significant increases to be voted on towards the end of this year to come into effect last year. This is a nationwide process. It's driven by council management, but it's also driven by the government. I mean, you read the government's latest housing plan, it explicitly talks about merging council rents and cost rental over time. In other words, doing away with differential rent, doing away with the basic fair idea that how much people pay for housing should be based on their income. And it's going to result in massive increases for council tenants. It's bad enough, but for HAP tenants, are going to be doubly hit. HAP tenants are going to be faced with significant increases, let's say 30% increases in what they're paying to the council, and then they're going to be hit by this increase, which if the HAP limits don't increase, all of that would be gobbled up in the top-ups that they are paying. They're the worst affected, and they're some of the most vulnerable people in the housing market as a whole. And I would appeal, you know, where the opposition is mostly united here, the left opposition certainly, in terms of opposing what the government is doing here, but I would call on all the left parties to take a stand on the councils against these council rent increases. And even if they have voted in some cases, to allow these to go ahead, to reconsider that, particularly in light of what's happening here and the extra pressure that is going to apply in terms of HAP tenants. Yeah, I'll finish just finally in relation to what our amendment is seeking to do, which is to... And it just shows you an image of how you could do things very fundamentally different. If you start from the point of view not of representing landlords, but instead of representing the majority of people who are affected by the housing crisis, you go about this a very, very different way, where you establish a board to reset rents to affordable levels, and where the guideline for affording, establishing affordability will be rents that are in general, no more than 20% of a tenant's income. That's the kind of alternative way of tackling the housing crisis, is saying let's stop pouring public money into the pockets of private landlords, of developers. Let's stop pouring and enabling more and more private renters' money to be funneled into the hands of landlords. Instead, let's protect tenants, let's ban economic evictions, let's control rents, and use public money to have a state construction company to build social and affordable homes. It is like the sensible thing to do if you weren't governed by class interests of representing landlords and the free market ideology that goes alongside that. Thank you, Deputy. Next.
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