Labour's Ivana Bacik says renting has to be seen as a sustainable option in the longer term.
She was speaking as hundreds of thousands of tenants could be facing further price increases.
Earlier this year, Housing Minister Darragh O'Brien linked rent increases to inflation in a bid to keep a lid of soaring rents.
When the legislation was introduced, Minister O'Brien said it would have seen rents rising by no more than 1% over the previous three years.
In the months since however, inflation has shot up and is now running at 3%.
Labour's Renters' Rights Bill is due to be introduced in the Dáil tomorrow.
Under the proposals excuses for evictions would be restricted, blanket bans on pets would be lifted and Rent Pressure Zones would be expanded to the whole country.
It'd also allow people to rent an unfurnished home.
Deputy Bacik says the approach to renting has to change.
"We're really trying to address what we see, and what I think most reasonable people see, as a current imbalance - whereby the landlord has much greater powers and much more extensive protections in our law than tenants.
"Traditionally we don't have a culture where people see renting as a long-term or sustainable option.
"And we really want to address that imbalance, and try and ensure that there is greater protection for renters - and that renting is seen as a longer-term and more sustainable option for people to have a home."
And she says they've heard from her own Dublin Bay South constituents.
"We have been inundated with people who are currently renting, telling us about their experiences, telling us about clear abuses of power and indeed breaches of power by landlords.
"I heard today from one constituent a requirement that the tenant hires a professional cleaning company to clean the apartment on returning it to the landlord at the end of a lease, before deposit would be returned - so in other words, eating into the right to have a deposit."
