Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will make a brief point and ask the Minister a question. We support the amendment. Renters have been hammered from pillar to post in recent years. I will not go back over all the points. They have been debated here many times. There is a clear need, in our opinion, for, at the very minimum, a national rent freeze. Many renters would say we need to go further than that and find a way to reduce the cost of rent by way of legislation. The Government does not agree with us on that. The Government is putting forward legislation which would cap rent increases at 2% or the rate of inflation, whichever is the lower at the time. That is off the mark. It misses what needs to be done.

The other day I asked the Taoiseach a question he was unable to answer. He said we would come back to it, so maybe we can revisit it this evening. I asked him about the report that appeared on a national newspaper's website the other morning which said that the rent cap would be set at 2% but that if a landlord had not raised the rent on a property in the previous year or the year before that, he or she would have the right under this legislation to increase the rent by a multiple of 2%. The Taoiseach said he could neither confirm nor deny that and that we would come back to the issue. Is the Minister in a position to give clarity on this? I have seen no denials of that report from Government sources, and the legislation would seem to me to indicate that that is the case, in other words, that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government has left a giant loophole through which many landlords and their legal representatives will be able to drive a cart and horse when the 2% proposal itself was not adequate in the first place. Maybe I am getting it wrong. Maybe the Minister will be able to clarify the matter. I ask him to do so. What is the position on that?

I support the amendment.

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