Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am only going to speak to amendment No. 3a. I have been waiting to speak on the other matter but I will deal with that when we go back on Report Stage.

The Minister referred to an unintended consequence and a drafting error. Are we seriously to believe that no one in the Department actually did the calculation before the amendment was proposed? Is that the case? If so, that is the only way there could be an unintended consequence. The only way is if no one actually did the calculation and worked it out. The Department is charged with calculating many things but it seems no one there carried out the calculation or saw what was happening.

For somebody whose two year rent review is in June next year and whose rent had been set at €1,400 a month two years previously, based on that calculation, there would be an 8% increase and then a 4% increase per year after that.

It beggars belief and calls into question the nature of all the amendments that have been put before us. What was outlined earlier in the day suggests all of this should have been recommitted and scrutinised in committee rather than being put into the House on Report Stage in the dying of the Dáil before Christmas in order to be debated. I, for one, cannot accept that nobody within the Department did that calculation in order to verify it before it was put before the House.

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