Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

This is a valuable discussion. In that spirit I will make a couple of comments and then I have a couple of questions for Ms O'Reilly. We are talking about assets, investments and sale prices and that is all fine but it is important for us to remember that in every rental tenancy there is a tenant or tenants, or families. They invest huge amounts of their time, money and often their emotional well-being in the properties they are in. While it is legitimate for landlords' representative organisations to talk about the concern for their members, one of the problems we have at the minute is many of the decisions that are being made are resulting in real people's lives being dramatically altered through eviction and homelessness. That is not in the first instance the fault of landlords but the fault of Government policy. However, let us always remember there are human beings, families and in many cases children involved. One of the consequences of the instability Dr. Byrne highlighted, which politicians from all parties deal with, is the churn of people moving from one rental to another and having to uproot their children from their schools etc. I want to put that back on the table because we should not lose sight of it.

I thank my colleague Senator Cummins. He gives me far too much credit for having influence over Government policy over a long period of time.