Mr. David Fitzsimons:

I thank the Chairman. The fundamental point Retail Excellence Ireland, REI, would like to make is that the Minister for Finance let many retailers down in the most recent budget when he announced that the Government would not act on the matter of upward-only rents, a subject the Chairman worked tirelessly on, having pledged that it would. The one good thing that came out of the Budget Statement was the application of guidelines to insist that the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, would engage with vulnerable tenants and potentially reduce rents. We meet NAMA officials every six weeks and they are doing that. They have reduced rents in the majority of cases for vulnerable tenants. We would like those guidelines to be applied to other State landlords in the upcoming budget such as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, which is currently increasing rents for tenants in Cork, and local authorities, which are forcing through rent increases on top of untenable rents.