Mr. Sam McGuinness:

I do not think rent control appeals to the average person who has bought a buy-to-let property. In the current situation, rent control is needed for everyone trying to get into any premises, not just homeless people. I do not know how close people in this room are to it but people looking for an apartment are queueing outside and are being gazumped. We used to talk about being gazumped for buying a house but now they are being gazumped for getting a flat. The shortage is dire. We also made a submission about quality. There could be a BER mark for quality. With regard to income tax relief, the withdrawal of the measure was a shame because it put control on the market. Now, there are no controls.

With regard to the homeless oversight group, Mr. Mike Allen, myself and Focus Ireland must believe this is manageable; otherwise, we could not go to work every day. We work in a very sad state of affairs and the most unfortunate people are getting more unfortunate as things improve. Everything is falling on top of them and the situation is getting more dire. Last night, there were 1,600 people and their family members in emergency accommodation. That is fixable. The combined group could come up with a robust, Government-supported action plan and we could get somewhere. There are two and a half years to go and much could be done. All of us are walking in the same direction. People with large titles are on the oversight group and if they can come up with a plan and influence local authorities, a lot could happen. However, it will take funding and the funding must come from the side of the balance sheet that we put aside for investment. Unless we invest in our beliefs, we will not get there.