Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief because we dealt with quite a part of this on Committee Stage and I appreciate the clarifications the Minister has given on the amendments. Will the Minister address a query I have about amendment No. 55? Another Deputy raised a matter relating to the new subsection (6). This subsection deals with notices served, prior to the enactment of this legislation, under section 22(2). The notices are 90-day rent review notices. If this has already been notified to the tenant, subsections (3) and (4), which contain the formula providing for a maximum 4% increase, do not have effect and the increase can be greater than the 4% figure in the formula.

My query relates to notices that have been issued after the relevant date. The relevant date is the date that the legislation is enacted and comes into effect. For example, if a tenant is informed by his landlord in late January that a rent review is taking place under section 22(2), which requires 90 days' notice, and the 90 days' notice period begins at the end of January and the Residential Tenancies Board then identifies the area as a rent pressure zone, do subsections (3) and (4) apply? This amendment states that subsections (3) and (4) do not apply where a notice under section 22(2) has been served immediately before the relevant date. This leads me to believe that, where a notice is served after the enactment of the legislation but prior to an area being designated a rent pressure zone, the notice can be interrupted, for want of a better word, and the 4% cap would apply despite the fact that the train had left the station in terms of the rent review. If that is the case, a question arises. If the Residential Tenancies Board by designating an area a rent pressure zone, as provided for in the legislation, can interrupt the rent review process and apply a cap, why can we not do it for notices that will be issued prior to the signing of this legislation by the President or that have been issued in the past few weeks but have not yet taken effect?

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