Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to delay, but I want to respond on the process, the pressure and the Minister's reasons. To be honest, if the Minister looks at how this has played out, it has been a mistake to link the planning legislation element of the Bill to the residential tenancies aspect of it. I take the Minister's point on wanting to deal with the rent certainty issue in fairly short order, but he could have had a residential tenancies Bill and introduced measures on Committee Stage. Having the two issues thrown in together has intensified the pressure and mixed up two issues in a way that has made this very unwieldy and, frankly, difficult, and has made the pressure all the greater on all of us. It is a matter for consideration. It is even problematic in terms of our ultimate attitude towards the legislation. We have indicated we would go further than the Minister, but any of us would welcome anything at all to improve the rental situation. Even if we agreed that what the Minister is proposing is better than nothing, it is tied to other measures with which many of us fundamentally disagree with regard to planning. This is very unfortunate considering the urgency and importance of the rental issue. I make this as a procedural point on how the process of this has played out.

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