Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

First of all, I acknowledge the efforts the Minister has made since taking up his job to engage with all of the political parties in the housing committee and more generally in the Dáil. There are many things the Minister has said over the course of recent weeks which I find encouraging and give some hope in terms of the action plan for housing. I also agree with him that no party has a monopoly on concern. As constituency Deputies, we are all getting representations and we all work on these issues on a regular basis, but our responsibility here is to act.

It is because of the urgent need for action that I cannot accede to the Minister's request for an adjournment to the debate. We have been discussing rent certainty for some time. The Minister and his Cabinet colleagues would have discussed it during the run up to the decision on the amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act last year. Threshold has produced detailed reports and has lobbied Deputies on all sides of the House for some time. We know the issues involved. If we adjourn the debate and return after the summer recess, it will be the end of the year before legislation on the issue is enacted, if legislation is forthcoming from the Government at all. The people we need to help with spiralling rents cannot wait that long for this very modest measure.

The Minister repeated the Taoiseach's earlier comments that we are not giving the housing committee its place. I would take it seriously if the Minister had not launched the initiative he launched today. I have no problem with the initiative as long as it results in more affordable homes being provided on those sites. However, the initiative the Minister launched this morning is a matter the housing committee actively considered and which we will address in our recommendations on Friday. If the Minister is willing to pre-empt and take action on this one issue, I do not see how he can criticise us for, as he sees it, pre-empting and taking action on this issue.

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