Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

He is completely mischaracterising our landlord sector. It is doing a lot of damage for renters or others who might invest in becoming a landlord, thus making a rental property available to a young couple, a young person or a person coming to live and work in this country.

The report refers to 1% of transactions in 2017 involving institutional landlords and the stock proportion being 4.6%. It states this is low. A rate of 4.6% is low in any market but, of course, I will keep this under review. We are trying to encourage the building of tens of thousands more homes, including apartments. We are trying to find a better balance in our landlord market so we will not be exposed to people leaving that market, as present. Institutional investors coming in and making a long-term play in providing apartments over periods of ten, 15, 20 and 25 years is in our interest because those properties will remain as places to rent. That is what we need. We are losing landlords from the market. It is better to have a balance between institutional landlords and the small landlord, who features at present. We do not have that balance yet and are nowhere near it. I will keep this under review until we get closer to the balance we need to see in order to have a properly functioning, mature rental sector.

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