Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Please do not take the injury time out on me, a Cheann Comhairle.

When he announced this group, the Minister said it would report by the end of June. I take it from what he has now said that it will not do so. Is he aware that he made this announcement on the same day that my party introduced a Bill, given the emergency nature of the crisis in the retail sector to deal with the issue of upward-only reviews of rent? On the same day that we published that Bill, in a knee-jerk action, the Minister set up this working group. I have information from significant individual retailers to the effect that the working group is no more than window dressing because it is not addressing the inadequacies of the rent review system. Will the group provide a register of lease interests? Will it provide a definition of market rent? These are just two of the critical issues involved in a sector that is the single biggest employer in the private sector, where 30,000 jobs were lost last year, a great many of them because of the inability of retailers to negotiate rents in line with trends in the market. The reason it cannot negotiate rents in line with the collapsing market is because of conditions that provide only for upward review of rents.

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