I want to get into some detailed points about this Bill, some points that I do not think have been raised yet, including the double blow that is presented here for homeless HAP tenants who are already being hit in many areas with council rent increases. Before that, the basic point which cannot be driven home hard enough is that this is a Bill for rip-off rents. That is the purpose of it. It is not an accidental outcome of it; that is its purpose. The Government strategy, explicitly, is to get rents to rise higher in order to attract more investment. It is a landlord's charter written by a landlord's Government. It is designed to drive up rents even higher than the unbelievably high levels that they are already at. It means that within the next few years, virtually all renters will be paying at least an extra €3,000 a year or an extra €250 a month. You would think the Government has no idea that we are in the middle of a dire cost-of-living emergency. People cannot afford to pay their rent, heat their homes, put food on the table or buy things for their kids. They already cannot afford to live. That is why People Before Profit, Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, the left Independents in the Dáil and a broad coalition of disabled person's organisations, trade unions, students' unions and civil society groups are launching the affordable Ireland campaign next month. The key planks of that campaign are to freeze and cap rents and to build public housing. The Government will only take action on the cost-of-living crisis if it is forced, so we need people power to force it. It seems to me that section 8(e)(ii) of the Bill potentially allows for rent hikes to market rates for existing pre-June 2022 tenants, whose Part 4 tenancy expires and who then enter into a further Part 4 tenancy for another six years. The Minister of State said in his opening speech yesterday that "Section 8 provides for a new national rent control in respect of new tenancies, that is, first-time tenancies between parties, created on or after 1 March 2026." That is supposed to reassure existing tenants that their rents will not shoot up yet, unless they move voluntarily or involuntarily. Of course, that happens in any case - on average, every three and a half years for most tenants, and every year for students in private rented accommodation. They are even more shafted by this Bill than everyone else. Another group getting doubly shafted are the HAP tenants and the homeless HAP tenants. Dublin City Council has already hiked rents. Councils across the country have already hiked the rents that they are paying to the council. On top of that, now they are going to be increasing the top-up they have to pay to their landlords. It is a shameful attack on the poorest households in the country. As I understand it, the Minister is saying this does not affect pre-June 2022 Part 4 tenancies. Section 8(e)(ii) provides that it does not apply to "a tenancy ... to which section 5(4)of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2021 applies", which means it does not apply to further Part 4 tenancies of unlimited duration. I cannot see that it states specifically anywhere in the Bill - I look forward to the Minister's reply - that it does not apply to further Part 4 tenancies that are not of unlimited duration; in other words, the situations where the tenants moved in prior to June 2022. If you moved into your home in April 2020 and you are coming to the end of a six-year Part 4 tenancy, which will expire in April 2026, assuming you are not evicted first it will automatically become a further Part 4 six-year tenancy at that point. Where does it say in the Bill that this further Part 4 tenancy is not a new tenancy? Citizens Information states, "After these 6 years, the tenancy ends and a new tenancy can begin." If a further Part 4 tenancy is legally a new tenancy, then section 8(e)(ii) appears to say that a dwelling that was previously rent-controlled for the previous six years - all those rents - will be reset to market rates. Can the Minister specifically answer that question? The final issue I want to raise is about section 14. It allows for so-called small landlords to carry out a no-fault eviction on grounds of sale if they would use at least 15% of the proceeds to pay off some or all of a debt that they owe which is falling due within nine months of the eviction date. That appears to me to be a massive loophole that will allow buy-to-let landlords to evict tenants on grounds of sale when they are coming to the end of their mortgage term. There is no need for it. They can simply sell in any case, with the tenants in situ, without forcing their eviction. The only reason to allow it is to maximise their sale price. There is also nothing to stop a landlord taking on a short-term loan in order to say it is falling due and therefore use this loophole to sell.

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