Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I want to withdraw Sinn Féin's amendment No. 9 in this grouping, which is irrelevant now given the Minister's amendments. I also welcome amendment No. 7, which as the Minister said, links rent reviews to inflation.

In 2016, Sinn Féin introduced the Rent Certainty Bill, which sought to link rent increases to inflation. On five separate occasions in the previous term, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil voted against rent certainty. This linking of rent reviews to inflation was a long battle between the then Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, and former Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan. The key change here, however, is the Minister's amendment on the replacement of the 4% cap with the HICP. I understand this will cover 74% of tenancies and then the remaining 26% of tenancies will continue to be subject to rent reviews every two years, in line with prevailing market rents.