Ms Rosalind Carroll:

Deputy O'Dowd mentioned the plight of tenants earlier. In the rental market and anecdotally, we are seeing some impact on supply from rent regulation. I do not think that the plight of tenants can be disentangled from that of landlords because both are needed for the relationship to exist. Some of the measures that have come in do not necessarily take into account that there are people charging rents below market rates and so on. There are issues for some landlords in the market. Not every landlord is charging to excess. When we are looking at the longer term plans and the review in June, we need to start thinking about certainty within the market. Whatever tweaking that we might think about doing, we need to provide some level of certainty to investors. Research we carried out in 2014 showed that most landlords at the time had mortgages. Their rental income did not cover mortgage repayments. While the rental market has increased in some areas, we are still 7% below peak rates outside of Dublin and that has to be taken into consideration.

It is important that everybody knows where we are going, that there is a sense of direction about policy and that we are going to bring some certainty to the market. That is the biggest question from many landlords and investors I have met over the last month. They ask if there are going to be more tweaks to regulations, and that is going to inform their decisions on providing further supply to the market or exiting. We are happy to provide data to any Deputies if they feel we have not answered any of the questions on rent pressure zones, RPZs, and our role in that.