Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I understand I am now going to breach my undertaking not to contribute any further to the debate but I want to make a focal scoire. I fully understand there is a housing shortage at the moment. I fully understand that people are being gouged for rent. I understand all of that. However, the amendment the Minister of State is proposing to section 5, which I realise I am being slightly disorderly in referring to, is a permanent change to our law. It is not something which will disappear when supply increases, or whatever. It is a permanent change to our law to the effect that all tenancies, once they have gone past six months, become tenancies of indefinite duration, terminable only in certain circumstances. That is the point I am making. The Senators' amendment is clearly to deal with temporary situations. If the Minister of State told me that this was all temporary, I would have a different view of it, but it is permanent.

Going back to what I mentioned about my own family upbringing, we were paid large sums of money to get out of that house. I am just saying that. In the end, somebody bought out the poor people who had got nothing by way of rent for years and the site was redeveloped for another purpose. My father, for the first time in his life, had some money in his hands because he was bought out as a tenant. I am just making that point. That legislation was brought in because of a jump in rents during the First World War. That is the point I am making. If a permanent change is made to the law because of a temporary situation, what the Minister of State has said about people leaving the market is going to come true. I wish him every luck in making more housing available and I admire what he and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, are doing to get more housing built now. However, those landlords who may leave the market are not looking two or three years down the line. Someone who is deciding to quit the market now is looking five or ten years down the line. Because this legislation is permanent, not temporary, in its effect, those landlords will be gone.