Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to notify the House that last night in Dublin a group of 100 citizens occupied a building in Tara Street in which NAMA has an interest, as part of the Home Sweet Home campaign to highlight the plight of homelessness in the city and the need for even more action from the Government. I commend them on what they have done. They are citizens who are appalled by the level of homelessness in the city. I urge the Minster to take some time out of his busy schedule to meet with them, both the campaigners and the homeless people who are there, to discuss it with them.

I asked a number of questions but they were not answered. I appreciate that we have had a long debate but at some stage the Minister needs to put his responses on the record. He has still not explained the confusion between 4% as a yield and 4% as a rent increase over each of the three years affected. That is one of the fundamental flaws of this legislation and of the Minister's justification for it. Despite the fact that I and other Members have repeatedly asked him to clarify the point, he has yet to do so.

I also asked the Minister on a number of occasions both in this House and in the media to provide the evidence on which he is basing his claim that CPI-linked rent certainty would lead to either a reduction of existing stock or act as a disincentive to landlords entering the market. To go back to the point I made earlier, if the current yields are 6% to 7% for new investment in the private rental sector, I do not see what the evidence would be.

Could the Minister clarify his response to Deputy Jonathan O'Brien's question? My understanding is that if a landlord has a property and rents out all of the rooms, even if they are individual tenancies, they are covered under previous and current legislation. It is only where I rent out a room in my own house that the legislation does not apply. That is a really important point because those landlords who often have properties with multiple rooms, where they let them all out, in many cases to very low income families or students, if they are not covered by the legislation that is a really significant flaw. I urge the Minister to clarify the position.

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