Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. As the Minister is aware, this is touching on a problematic area. We are all familiar with the staggering sight of dozens of people queueing to view a property that becomes available on the rental market. The inability to save is very real for people who are renting in the private market who want to purchase their own home. Even if they could service a mortgage, they cannot save a deposit to buy a home given that they are paying rent of between €1,500 and €2,000 or more, as Deputy Boyd Barrett said.

As Deputy Pearse Doherty acknowledged, this measure will only have a benefit if a rent cap is imposed. I ask the Minister to address that point, whether the Government has stretched the constitutional advice as to what can be done. We have rent control limits at the moment and the advice of the Attorney General and other legal advice was cited on a number of occasions when that measure was introduced.

The landlord tax relief is €10 million next year. From my perspective, it is a very modest measure to try to bring some stability to a market which is losing approximately 3,000 landlords every year. That is the reality. It is not a game changer. It is a very small measure and it might help to stem the exit of domestic landlords from the market. We have an inflow of very large institutional investor landlords but we need to have a rental stock spread throughout the country and within urban areas we need to have rental properties available in ones and twos spread across individual housing developments and along different streets. The large institutional investors will not provide that model of rental stock. They will buy large blocks within Dublin and perhaps other cities as well.

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