Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It will be rolling rent increases. That is my point. Somebody has grouped together 15 amendments and it will be difficult to get answers on them all. While the amendments are all on rental, many are on different issues. The Minister has to explain what the Government is going to do.

Amendment No. 1 refers to this measure applying the day after the law goes through. Although the Minister may argue it is illegal to do so, I believe this should be made retrospective. It is not only me who is raising this and it has been raised by housing organisations and those dealing with the homeless. All of this legislation is retrospective because if somebody has, for example, a Part 4 tenancy, that person will now get a six-year tenancy rather than a four-year tenancy. If we can make that retrospective, why can we not make the provision on rent increases retrospective as well? I say this because we all know what is going to happen. It happened with Deputy Alan Kelly's two-year lease measure, whereby many people got massive rent increases in anticipation of that being enacted.

The Minister said we need more evidence about counties Kildare, Meath, Wicklow, Louth, the suburbs of Cork and Limerick city. What more evidence does he need? Does he not read daft.ie? That is all he has to do. We have a number of amendments challenging the timeframes he has put into this Bill. The idea that the Minister would have to wait for six quarters - a year and a half - before he would intervene in the sacred market is complete lunacy. It is obvious there is a trend over two quarters, for example. Even for places like Limerick, which would not have been an area with a huge rent or housing issue in comparison to other areas, when I went looking yesterday, I found there have been increases in many parts of Limerick. The reason is that students cannot afford to go to college in a number of locations and are having to pick different counties, which puts massive pressure on the whole rental market. I have seen people being asked for €3,000 a month in rent in Stillorgan, obviously because it is in close proximity to UCD. That is what families who are trying to get a roof over their head in those areas are competing with. It is incredible the Minister would allow landlords to bring in a 4% potential rent increase on a €3,000 a month property.

As was said, the key question for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil is not how affordable rent is but how profitable it is. The Minister needs to explain where he came up with what I am calling the Coveney algorithm. In his speech and in the media, he made the point that the figure of 4% has been selected on the basis of careful analysis and research. What careful analysis and research? Can we have a look at it? I assume the Minister has bar charts galore. He also said it was done on the basis of extensive consultation with a range of stakeholders. I doubt any stakeholder who deals with tenants told him a 4% rent increase in Dublin and Cork would be okay at the moment. We all know which stakeholders the Minister listens to. He went on to say:

The figure of 4% is a carefully measured response to the current extreme pressures in the rental market. It will provide certainty for tenants ... that they will not face a rental hike of the order many have seen recently and it will provide certainty for landlords ... that they will continue to see a return on their investment.

That was obviously key.

A few months ago, the Minister and other members of Government said any kind of interference in the market was not a good idea. What has changed? How can we interfere in the market now? I wonder what has brought him to this point. Will he explain it? The only conclusion I can come to-----

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