Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I think it is something that we would like more research on to get some clarity on that.

We have a rent freeze, essentially, at the moment in rent pressure zones with a maximum increase of 2% but I hear many people calling for a rent freeze for periods of two or three years. Some of the reading I have done around it suggests that if you were to freeze rents at the moment, and you would peg the rents that are out there at the moment, new rentals coming on with larger companies that have a lot of rental stock would not be frozen and those companies could set their rent at whatever level they want. This means you would be penalising people who have rental properties at the moment without impacting on new entrants. Is there any truth in that? What is the view of anyone here on rent freezes and the impact it might have on the rental market? I acknowledge that is a big question.