Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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I thank the witnesses for coming in. My colleagues have already spoken about the issues within the RTB and we have covered most of that. I am going to go straight into the questions. Roughly 15% of landlords are leaving the market, with 10% doing so to return the property to a family home. There are also people returning from abroad who had rented out their property while they were away and are looking to move into their own homes. That is one concern.

A lot of concerns I have from a rental point of view are about the county sector and towns that have apartments. This was touched on earlier. A lot of people bought apartments a number of years ago and it is now coming to fruition and some are selling them. The reason many are being sold is that they need to be refurbished, especially if they are over a shop unit. Anything that is touching a shop unit has to meet fire regulations and under the planning laws now, this has to be done storey by storey. Even within an old building, there are certain fire regulations to cover. A lot of people who had those apartments from years ago now want to upgrade the property underneath but it is not viable to do up the apartment and many are leaving the market and selling the buildings because of that. I see that from my own construction background. I can see that people are looking at it that way.

A lot of people are also leaving the market because of the infrastructure in their towns and villages. They can see from a rental point of view that people are not moving to their area as they cannot build any new houses because of the lack of infrastructure and failure to invest over the years. I am talking about large towns with populations of up to 4,000 or 5,000 people where the sewerage systems are at capacity. People are seeing that there is no expansion of their town because of the facilities in them so they are looking at the properties they have and realising they are not economical to refurbish. They are trying to get out now because they can see there is going to be less investment in the towns and villages where the rental properties are. That is also true of one-off houses. Under the taxation system for the rental sector, a limited company pays 25% tax, and a sole trader pays 40%. Landlords look at what the tax regime is, the investment they have made and the return they get and many of them are pulling out. A lot of them are scared based on seeing people who want to get their properties back and the length of time it takes to get tenants out. There are a lot of good or even fantastic tenants but there are also a lot of fantastic landlords. There is a minority of tenants and landlords who should not be in the system in the first place because of what they do. Many people with rental properties are scared because of that. There is a scare factor in why people are actually getting out.

In the RTB's survey, how many of the properties surveyed were older apartments where people could not make the investment because of the inflation costs in construction, which are running at about 13%? As I say, I am in construction and costs fluctuate from week to week depending on what email comes from what supplier. An awful lot of the bankrolling now for materials, especially if they are one-off or specialist materials, is upfront payments. People have to pay upfront before they even start the project. In the survey, how many of those properties were older properties where people were leaving the market because of that?