Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator. Were I to go further and say that if they do not get the money they will walk away from their work for ever, I would be laughed out of it, and rightly so. Yet here we are with Fine Gael demanding just that: a 12% pay hike for landlords. However, that is the minimum. There is plenty of room for greater increases if living in Limerick, Galway or Waterford. That is considered not just acceptable but absolutely necessary. Otherwise, apparently, landlords will walk away from the market and, worse than that, they will take the houses with them. We do not know where they will hide these houses, but the Fine Gael mantra is that we will never see them again and no one will ever be able to live in them again. I know it is Christmas and fairy tale time, but it is a bit rich to be going down that road, particularly when we have 174,000 landlords, which is 2,000 more than we had at the beginning of the year. I would love to hear from my colleagues in Limerick. My heart goes out to them because it would appear that Limerick people are not good enough for any kind of rent protections. Dublin and Cork people perhaps, but Limerick people? God no. There was a 15.9% increase in rents this year in Limerick, but we cannot have anything that might upset the landlords in Limerick or Galway, which is bizarre.

The key point is that Sinn Féin gave this House three opportunities to legislate for rent certainty, the first one being in June of this year. To be frank with Fianna Fáil, the difference between what we were arguing for, which was a rate of inflation increase, and a 2% increase is virtually nothing. I really do not understand why Fianna Fáil did not agree with us at the time. Fianna Fáil is now complaining about Fine Gael, but when it had the opportunity to do something about rent certainty it, unfortunately, blew it. It is a little late to come into the Chamber now complaining about this legislation. This is a theatre of the absurd. It is Fianna Fáil pretending to be different from Fine Gael. It is a bizarre spectacle. We are here to legislate-----