Mr. Tom Dunne:

You get into issues like the definition of what is meant by a rent freeze. One could argue that the present arrangement, where you can only increase the rent by 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is the lower, is not only effectively a rent freeze but is bringing down rents at a time when inflation is much higher. Is that a rent freeze or what is it? You get into definitions and if you have to reduce that concept to legislation, it can prove quite technically different to do that. Issues like that might apply.

What we have now is more a form of rent certainty than rent control. The way it is constructed is very well thought out because it does not do what the previous forms of rent control did in the Rent Restrictions Acts. They froze rent at a particular point in time and that was it; there was no way out. With this measure, if rents fell or the market corrected at some stage in future, it would just go into abeyance. That gives landlords a lot of comfort. You do not see a lot of landlords complaining all that much about this issue where rents can go up by 2%. They do, because they are losing money but there is still evidence that people are getting into the market, notwithstanding that. It is a very complex area and I do not know if we can answer it any more easily than that.