Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

His party's rhetoric and promised policies are part of the reason some landlords are deciding to leave the market. Let us call a spade a spade. The Deputy's policy on the rental sector is to freeze the rents so landlords never get to put the rent back up again. They can never sell the property because he will ban evictions of all forms for however long and he will increase the tax. Sinn Féin even has it in its pre-budget submission that it would increase the tax on the rental sector

That is Sinn Féin policy. The party has absolutely no regard for the private rental sector. I am not sure it even recognises that there is a need for one. The Deputy believes that the State can do everything through the provision of social, cost-rental and affordable accommodation. We are doing a great deal and will do more into the future but that is essentially what the Deputy's party policy is. If he does not take my word on the need for a change in this area, I am sure he has heard of Focus Ireland. I believe this organisation knows a great deal more than he does or, indeed, I do about homelessness, about the private rental sector and about the role it is playing with regard to landlords exiting the market and the consequences that has for the real people he and I represent.

Earlier this year, as the Deputy knows, Focus Ireland commissioned Chartered Accountants Ireland to prepare a briefing paper and made a submission which called for urgent measures to address the mismatch in the supply of rental accommodation. It set out seven fully costed proposals, primarily using tax policy as a lever to encourage small-scale landlords to remain in the residential rental market in the medium to long term, and to help prevent homelessness. Its CEO said that Focus Ireland believes that the Government must take action to encourage small-scale landlords to stay in the market as this would help to cut the record number of households becoming homeless. It went through a whole range of proposals and we are not doing all of them. It listed increasing wear and tear rates, 100% capital allowances for retrofitting, parity in taxation for corporate and individual landlords, deduction for local property tax, LPT, aligning the allowable rental expenses with normal trading deductions, succession reliefs and capital gains tax, CGT, relief. This is a homeless organisation which went to the trouble of commissioning a piece of work whereby proposals could be made for changes to the tax system because it recognised that it is a factor. The Deputy is very good at quoting people from the past but I have a quote for the Deputy now which goes back to August of last year, when the notices to quit figures released for the second quarter of 2022 were 1,781. By the way, the figure in the last quarter was approximately 4,500. At that time, Deputy Doherty's party's housing spokesperson issued a statement saying:

We need a crisis intervention plan to slow down the disorderly exit of private landlords exiting the ... market. All options much be on the table [presumably a typo] for consideration including a temporary ban on evictions, an accelerated tenant in situ purchase scheme by local authorities, an acceleration of social housing delivery and tax reform in the private rental sector.

That is the housing spokesperson of the Deputy's party had to say in 2022, when the exodus of landlords was a fraction of what it is now. What happened to the Deputy's examination of the private rental sector and tax reform?