Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

I am delighted to speak on the Bill. I compliment the Minister on ensuring that, since 28 February, all new rent review clauses will be construed as providing that rents can go up or down without reference to the rent payable immediately prior to the review date, which is a welcome development.

With regard to leases already entered into, it is clear from a legal and constitutional perspective that wholesale interference with existing lease arrangements, which are essentially matters of private contract between individual parties, is not a feasible option. While this is a pity, that is the legal advice we have received. It is also clear that any move in the direction of imposing a rent freeze across the board would be impossible to implement in a constitutional manner.

To state the position briefly, the advice received from the Office of the Attorney General is that real legal and constitutional difficulties would arise if property rights were to be affected retrospectively. Opposition efforts to pretend otherwise are mischievous and have no basis in legal reality. There is nothing of practical value for hard-pressed businesses from these Opposition efforts. I wish I could agree with the Opposition and say there is something of value, but I cannot.

The real issue is that ordinary businesspeople who have properties for rent, of whom there are many in my constituency, have for the past two years or more negotiated their rates with their tenants in an effort to keep them. They have been very fair and, when tenants have shown their accounts, the tenants and landlords have struck a deal which is manageable and which, hopefully, the tenants can live up to in order to maintain the employment in these small businesses.

Small and medium businesses created 500,000 jobs between 1996 and 2006, which is a startling figure given that most of them have fewer than ten employees. These are the businesses on which this country depends to maintain employment and to revitalise, reinvest, re-engage, expand and try to keep going.

I condemn out of hand the old style of landlord from past times, when we had tenants on one side and landlords on the other. We had the tenants' bank and the landlords' bank for big institutions. This is where the problem lies. All of these people are playing a merry game at this time, namely, waiting to get into NAMA and artificially putting up their prices while trying to keep a level to the value of their property, despite some areas having become ghost towns and ghost villages. They are playing a game whereas the tenant is trying to survive and pay his way by paying his rates, tax, insurance, PRSI and all the other charges, while attempting to keep his doors open for an ever longer time to compete with the big businesses. In some cases, landlords got badly burned with these bankers but that was not the fault of tenants. Some landlords are playing an artificial game which must be brought to an end. The sooner NAMA gets up and running, the better for all of us.

I could refer to many other issues, including that of bank credit. Ordinary business people and SMEs cannot get the credit which is the lifeblood of their business and they cannot get paid on time while, at the same time, they have to deal with joint labour committee, JLC, orders which are out of date at this time. All of these matters were negotiated in the boom times. I am all for a fair day's pay for a fair day's work but we have to revaluate where we are going. We have to maintain jobs for our people and maintain our small businesses, which are the backbone of the country. We must also try to combat out-of-town developments through the planning guidelines.

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