Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In respect of the Minister's amendments I am, in principle, in favour of a statutory definition of substantial refurbishments. That was always our position and, while I liked the version in the original Bill on account of it being so restrictive, we have to deal with the amendments in front of us.

I have a couple of technical questions. The criteria for an extension are straightforward and they seem sensible. The creation of an extra room has to be within existing building regulations but one could imagine a person subdividing one room into two and, so long as the two rooms met the regulations for adequate room size, the work constituting substantial refurbishment, even though the financial cost of subdividing a room into two would not be very significant. How can the Minister satisfy the committee that the provision cannot be abused?

I share Deputy Boyd Barrett's concern about the building energy rating, BER. Anything that incentivises and pushes landlords to raise BERs is important. It is a minimal cost to improve from the lowest grades. If something is already at a high grade, going up a point or two might not necessarily cost a significant sum. I like the principle of finding a mechanism but I am not sure what the Minister has is adequate. I do not have a better option for him but it is something that he could look at between now and Report Stage.

This gets tricky when it relates to changes in internal layout. What kind of guidance will be given to the RTB or to the local authority to make it clear what kinds of changes would fall within this proposal? Likewise with adaptation works, it is a very general proposition. If there are substantial renovation works to assist disability adaptability, that is really good but it could include a relatively minimal level of change, such as ramps and rails, which would raise a question.

All of these works we are talking about already enable landlords to write off the capital costs against their tax liabilities, albeit at 12.5% over a year. I am not proposing this but I know that Deputy Casey had a good discussion with the Minister at a previous meeting about a financial threshold. Working a financial threshold into legislation is very clumsy and I am not proposing that but I think for any of us to justify a threshold to excuse somebody from the rent pressure zones, it has to be over and above the ordinary renovations one would expect landlords to be doing, which they can write off against their tax liability anyway.

I am not opposed in principle to what the Minister is proposing but there is a lot of convincing to be done that what is currently in front of us is tight enough not to open up another area of abuse. This will be more tricky to abuse than the current scheme but the questions I am asking are genuine in intent.