Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

On the substantive issue, the Minister asserted that the Government is not pretending to do something. The issue we are discussing is that of people facing 8% rent increases. It has become a significant issue, so much so that the Fine Gael by-election candidate was forced to say that it is both a revelation and outrageous and called on the Government to do something. It has become a political issue to which the Government has been forced to respond. Effectively, however, the Government is doing nothing. That is the reality. Nothing changes for the vast majority of people who have either already received notice of rent increases of up to 8% or are waiting to see if they will receive notification of them in the next number of months. The same situation applies.

The comfort that the Minister gives those people is to reassure them that the Government is working on something in the background and will come back with it in autumn. That will be too late for Jane and many of the people who I mentioned previously in the Dáil, because their rent increases have already been imposed. Someone could be notified of an 8% rent increase tomorrow. That could happen right now and the Government is not doing anything about it.

Even though the Minister has said that he cannot accept the amendments and so on, does he agree that the effect of the period of the Covid-19 pandemic should not be counted towards getting more than a 4% rent increase? Does he agree that landlords should not be able to use the fact that they could not increase rents for a period to take advantage now? Does he agree with that politically? Is that his aim? Does he want to achieve that or is it only those 100 people who signed the form and said their incomes were affected by the Covid pandemic who deserve the protection of not facing a higher than 4% rent increase? That is the key point. We will get to this again in other amendments, and getting clarity on that. I believe very firmly that they way the Government has spoken around this issue has been to give the impression that something is being done for all those who could be facing a rent increase of up to 8% when, in reality, something is being done for a tiny minority of those people.

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