Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State did not, not if one considers that there are 700,000 waiting for him to do something about their plight. They are the people about whom I am more concerned than landlords, developers and others who became involved in speculation. There is considerable fear. I received many queries from people in the past two weeks about when the Bill would come into force and what would happen. We have had situations where landlords effectively doubled their increases, knowing that they would not be able to increase rents for two years. That is effectively what has happened and the Minister of State has not mentioned it at all, yet two Ministers promised that that would not happen. The Minister of State should accept the amendment. The legislation should be backdated to when the announcement was made three weeks ago, when the Government set landlords off on a course of panic and rack-renting because that is effectively what has happened.

In terms of what the Bill does not contain, the way the Minister of State has proceeded has left most of us in total and utter confusion in trying to understand what is before us.

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