Mr. Neil McDonnell:

Whatever about employers, I can tell the members of the committee as legislators - and I suggested this to Deputy O'Reilly - that they will come under considerable pressure from the big landlords. They will probably also come under pressure from Revenue, telling them what they can and cannot do. I got a call this morning from a business that has been shuttered since March of last year until this month.

This is not just an issue with private landlords. This business has been contacted by Dublin City Council advising it that its rent will be increased but it has been shut for a year. The State acts as landlord as well.

We have been arguing for a long time about upward only rents and so on. A completely bogus assertion has been made that leases constitute property rights that cannot be touched and it is verbotento go near them at all. That simply is not true under the Constitution. We had a legal opinion to that effect from a senior counsel who is now a member of the Supreme Court. Anyone can take that on, including Dublin City Council by all means.

We need to get real. We have had a kind of a steroidal residential and commercial property market in Ireland. In commercial property, it has been underpinned by these leases that do not reflect real commercial value. We now have Dublin City Council putting the gun to the head of a business that has been shut for a year. The committee needs to understand where some of the pressure will come on legislators in the next number of months.