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

Forget about build to rent. In some sense, build to rent no longer exists on the planning guidelines. We have a great deal of rental stock that pre-exists build to rent, particularly in this city and less so elsewhere. Build to rent does not capture everything the witnesses are discussing because there are pre-build-to-rent properties. Build to rent only came in in 2018. Many of the build-to-rent planning permissions did not use the build-to-rent design standards. Build to rent is a design standard, as per the ministerial guidelines of 2018. The planning permission is the design. More than 50% of approved build-to-rent planning applications did not use the build-to-rent design standards because the developers were hedging their bets, smartly enough, in case they did not get institutional investors and had to sell them off individually. How do we capture the various types of property? A multi-unit development can include pre-build-to-rent properties, build-to-rent properties with the build-to-rent design standards and build-to-rent properties without the build-to-rent design standards. The nature of ownership within those blocks could be different, depending on when they were built. There could be a situation where, in a multi-unit development, one landlord owns X number of properties and another landlord owns Y number of properties and they could have different sets of obligations under this Bill. Some would be forced – I do not mean “forced”, as that sounds like I am against the idea – or obligated to offer the tenants the chance to purchase while others would not, depending on the number of properties they own in that development. Is that not the case?