Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses for their time and their presentations. I have read the submissions and a number of things jumped out at me. Certainly, the threat to jobs is one. On the flip side, we have to examine the kind of jobs these are. An opportunity exists, and we all have said it. Probably every member of this committee has at some point said that the pandemic has caused us to re-evaluate what we regard as the front line and who we regard as front line workers. They are not just doctors and gardaí. They are the people who kept us supplied, kept us fed and kept us going all the way through the pandemic. I would say to the representatives of industry and of the workers that we owe a debt of gratitude to those people who went into work when it was not safe, when we did not know the scale or the issues and when we were still getting to grips with the pandemic. The people in the shops and the people working in distribution and in the supply chain were still there while everybody else was trying to figure out how to deal with this. We should not let any opportunity go without putting on the record our gratitude and our admiration for those workers. It is good that we are now looking at the work they do and the essential nature of that work.

We have an opportunity post-pandemic to rebuild, and both of the submissions alluded to this. We need to look at how we are going to do that. To borrow a phrase from the US President, Mr. Joe Biden, "Can we build back better?". Building back better has to be about sustainable jobs and about jobs that can meet the cost of living. Mr. Doyle is right that the Government has a job of work to do to ensure that it controls the cost of rent, in particular in our capital but not exclusively. We know that over the last ten to 15 years successive Governments have facilitated this housing crisis and we now see that that is having an impact right across all of the sectors. I have said this on a number of occasions and I have said it directly to the Tánaiste and to Ministers in government. I have asked them not to give up on retail. I worry sometimes when the question is asked that representatives of Government seem to just say that retail is changing. It is changing but that does not have to mean the end of the shops on our main streets and the death of our city and town centres. Retail is changing but we need to be able to move with that.

With that in mind, I have some questions on rent, which is an issue I have raised many times. I am fearful for many businesses that when they pull up their shutters to try to work that there is going to be a big bill on the mat. I know the Government is saying that it hopes landlords will show forbearance. It has great faith in landlords but I do not share that. Perhaps Mr. Graham might be able to outline to us the extent to which the rental crisis is there and any discussions that he has had with Government specifically in relation to the mandatory mediation scheme. The words "mandatory" and "mediation" contradict each other but I understand the point that he was trying to make. Could he outline areas of best practice internationally and any feedback received from Government in this regard?