Mr. Tom O'Brien:

That leaves approximately €3,000 a year to service the mortgage. The mortgage at that level will be running at €12,000, €13,000 or €14,000. To state there are superprofits in rental is absurd and possibly is the reason we have this sort of anti-investor legislation coming through. It is probably the reason we have the supply issue. There is no return unless one has no mortgage in the buy-to-let sector. Hence, we need tax breaks to resolve that €6,500 hit that is there, on a property-by-property basis; reintroduction of 100% mortgage relief; and a special rate of income tax for rental of 20%. All that is needed and one will find then that apartments and houses will come back to the market and people will stop selling. Unless people face up to the reality that property owners need to be incentivised, as they do not do this and take on financial, tenant, and legal risk lightly, there will be no increase in supply and we will be sitting here this time next year with the same issues except that - members are correct - the homeless figures will have gone up and the number of properties available for rental will have gone down. We will be sitting here wondering why that is the case, when we have been here time after time. We met Deputy Jan O'Sullivan in her time as housing Minister, and we now have been before this committee on three occasions. We have met the Minister for Finance and his representatives, as well as the Minister for the environment and his representatives, but nobody wants to listen because are no votes in landlords as there are not enough of them. It is not populist to come out and say that one wants to incentivise property owners. It is okay to incentivise Google, Facebook and every other business person in the country can get incentivisation, be it grants or whatever. Landlords cannot, however, because it is not populist or a popular thing to do. There are no votes in it and we all understand the reality of the situation.