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

The difficulty is that we replace one level of instability with another level of instability. Again, I draw the Minister's attention to what is happening in a number of large European cities, where large institutional investors are not long-term professional landlords in the way the Minister has described but short-term funds looking for short-term gain. Of course, here, for those particular investment vehicles, we do not charge tax on the rent roll or capital gains tax when they have flipped a property at a later stage, and depending on how they are structured, they may not even pay dividend withholding tax. We are inviting in the very short-term types of investment in the residential property market that will lead to ever greater levels of instability.

I repeat my question to the Minister as he has not answered it in the first two rounds. Will the Department look at the specific impact of these types of investment vehicles? Again, I stress I am not against long-term sensible investment in the rental market so long as it is producing security for tenants in terms of security of tenure and rent certainty. That is not what is happening in other jurisdictions and my worry is that, as these funds start to enter our market, we will replace the instability of the small accidental landlord with the instability of the large institutional vulture fund, which is very bad for our rental market.

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