Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

The question is to do with commercial rents. We all know that commercial rents are volatile and I accept they are coming down in many sectors. However, it is clear that institutional investors, pension funds, banks and others, are not reducing their commercial rents. They do not wish to do so because they do not want to come clean about their own capital situation, that they have based their own books on overvalued assets.

Does the Minister of State agree with this analysis? Does he agree that institutional investors, the big financial institutions, who are landlords, are not doing enough to reduce commercial rents? Before he has his group, his committee, stakeholders and matrices and all the other stuff, he has to answer the simple question of whether he agrees with that analysis that the financial institutions are not adequately reducing commercial rents.

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