Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

As regards the property services Bill, the Taoiseach is correct. One piece of legislation cannot deal with the particular set of agendas which relates to management companies. Legislation has already been drafted in my Department on the regulation of property services, but there will also have to be at least one other piece of legislation to deal with the position of tenants vis-À-vis their own management companies, which is a slightly different issue. The Deputy will be aware that I attended a conference at the Law Society recently, which was sponsored by that society and the Law Reform Commission. These issues were dealt with in great detail on that occasion.

For the Deputy's information, I wish to put on record that my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, wrote to the local authorities that were of particular interest to Deputy Catherine Murphy and Deputy Joe Higgins. Those authorities were effectively using private management companies as a way of reimposing rates in certain areas, to get them to take those estates in charge, and not to use that as a means of hiving off their own responsibility to particular tenants. It is a complex issue, however, as the Deputy will appreciate. The legislation in preparation in my Department will deal with some but not all of the agenda that is necessary to ensure that people are not ripped off by private management companies, or by developers who never trigger the establishment of the companies for estates by holding on to some of the properties. There is a series of issues that must be dealt with.

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