Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

He is about doing it very brazenly and then he wants to try to distract from that fact. He should go ahead and extend the 2% cap across the State. He should do that. We will support him in doing it. I do not think anyone will object to that. However, that does not disguise the actual intent and the effect, in the here and now and in the long term, of what he is about to do.

The rent pressure zone provisions are being gutted. Regarding existing tenancies, let me read the Taoiseach's own words: "All landlords will have the right to reset rent where the rent is below market value at the end of each six-year tenancy." There we have it. Those are his own words. I have raised with him the issue of turnover tenancies, where people voluntarily exit a tenancy. That happens tens of thousands of times every year. I have told him that among the first to be really hit hard with this will be students.

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