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

This is incredible. I asked the Minister about this in the introduction because he said "annual" rent increases, whereas my understanding was that we lived under a system of two year rent increases. The Minister changed that. It was not just a formula. The Minister used words. It is on the first page of his speech, so I do not think it was a drafting error. However, when it was questioned and he realised people could be getting an 8% increase, he knew that would go out in the media, so he quickly got it changed. In fairness, that is what happened.

My point is that if the Minister is working on this overnight and bringing it to a committee tomorrow, we need it to be very clear in words, not formulas, exactly what is the situation in regard to how often a rent can be increased and what it can be increased by. It is unbelievable.

I want to quote the Minister's earlier remarks which show it could not have been a mistake in the Department. The second paragraph of his speech states:

Under the system I am proposing, areas where rents are high and rising quickly will be identified and designated by the Minister as rent pressure zones. In those areas, annual rent increases...

That is what I questioned the Minister on, and Deputy Curran then straight away raised the possibility of an 8% increase - he is obviously a bit better at maths than I am.

The question of Deputy Kelly's two-year rent review has been bubbling all week. I do not know how somebody suddenly redrafted this but this is absolutely shambolic. Landlords are not going to respect some little formula. It has to be written out in a proper statute. This has to be scrapped.

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