Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I understand all of that. To be honest, my quarrel is not with the Residential Tenancies Board and it is more with the Department. This is pertinent to me as it affects an area of my constituency, but it is quite a substantial area. I am not sure if the witnesses are familiar with this but there are three electoral areas where, because they were redrawn in 2019, a portion was left outside a rent pressure zone. In my area, that relates to half of the town of Carrigaline, which the witnesses may be aware is a very substantial commuter town near Cork city and just a 15 or 20-minute drive from the city depending on traffic; Crosshaven, which again has commuters; the village of Ballygarvan, which has grown very substantially; and a number of other areas. In the intervening period, all of the electoral areas around that, going from the Cork-Kerry border right down to Barryroe in west Cork and up to the Waterford border, have been designated rent pressure zones. I do not have the capacity to evaluate or go through Daft.ie over the various months since 2019, but it seems impossible that the rate of increase in that portion of the electoral area would not have been similar to the areas much further from Cork city. It is a part of the Cork city rental market.

To me, there is an anomaly in the legislation. I have raised with the Department and the various Ministers who have held that office whether that information was gathered on the basis of areas smaller than an electoral area. From what I am hearing today, it was not. It would not have been possible and there would have been no mechanism whatsoever for that portion of the electoral area to have qualified. Is that fair to say? I am not expecting Ms Gallagher to put herself in a difficult position and I will try to put the question in the most innocuous way possible. Is it true to say that the Residential Tenancies Board does not currently have a mechanism for establishing the rate of increase in an area smaller than an electoral area?