I have to plead with the Taoiseach to stop the rent reset that is going to be contained in the residential tenancies Bill. Since he made the announcement last year, he has unleashed havoc on thousands of renters out there who are facing a notice to quit this spring. This has been presented as short-term gain in terms of higher rents and evictions in order to get the longer term gain of greater supply. It is utter nonsense. This is not some sort of diet. These are people's homes and they have nowhere to go. There are people coming through my clinics who are facing notices to quit. They have nowhere to go in the Dublin area, with rents of over €3,500. They cannot afford it and there is an irony here in regard to what the Government is introducing. The State is going to be on the hook for paying for these higher rents over the long term. My plea to the Taoiseach is to abandon the rent reset. There are other parts of this Bill that are very welcome, such as the rent register, but the Taoiseach has to abandon the rent reset because we are throwing renters to the wolves.

The last thing I want to say is that there are many of us in this House who are safe and secure in our own homes. We are not experiencing what renters are experiencing out there in terms of a precarious future with nowhere to live.

Over 240,000 people who are currently renting will not have their tenancies impacted by these measures.

But there is-----

No.

That is an important point. I welcome the fact that the Deputy is at least the first person on the left to welcome the rent price register. Listening to everybody else, you would imagine Armageddon was about to befall us and there was nothing at all to be recommended. This Bill fundamentally strengthens rent protection and protects renters much more effectively than anything that has gone before this legislation.

The catalyst for this was the recommendation by the Housing Commission for the reform of the rent pressure zones because they were a temporary, ad hoc solution. They were never going to sustain. We needed clarity for investment into the future. We need investment, so the reset is important. We need investment down the line. We cannot provide the €20 billion per annum. We are doing about €9 billion per annum on housing. The Department of Finance says we need €20 billion between public and private to get 50,000 to 60,000 houses per year. That is the challenge. We need to get the right balance between protection of tenants and facilitating further investment in the market.