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

-----but more than 40 sites have now seen construction and development because of the levy.

Moving on to the questions with which we are dealing, overall the impact to date has been very minimal. If we consider 2017, less than 1% of transactions were from large foreign institutional investors - that is based on either 2017 or 2018 data. Approximately 4.5% of tenancies are under the control of or the administration of these foreign institutional investors but it is growing. Part of the reason for that is because of the changed guidelines around build-to-rent to attract more finance in to invest in more apartments, building and development. It is good we are doing that because I believe we would all agree that we want to move away from the instability we currently have, because of our over-reliance on small individual landlords, to a more stable, mature and European style rental sector. That means larger landlords making a longer-term play but we want them to make that play based on what we might refer to as a steady Eddie, a reasonable rate of return that does not allow for gouging. That is why there is some comfort in knowing that the vast majority, if not all, institutional investors have invested in rent pressure zone areas where we do have strict regulations and they will get only stricter when we agree the legislation coming through the House.

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