Rents impasse - U-turn on rent reviews unacceptable

Last week Taoiseach Enda Kenny declared that his party had reneged on their election pledge to tackle upward-only rent reviews for business because of “constitutional difficulties”.

For any business renting a premises covered by a pre-2010 deal — upward-only rent reviews have been banned since then — that trite dismissal is more than disappointing and, in the face of ever mounting state-generated costs and untouchable Celtic Tiger-era rents, unacceptable.

It is equally unacceptable that the Taoiseach should imagine that his “constitutional difficulties” wave of the hand closes the issue. Hundreds of businesses and the security of thousands of jobs depend on change on this lob-sided featherbedding. That Mr Kenny referred to the issue at a function on job creation is the blackest kind of bathos. That he is prepared to contemplate businesses closing and thousands of workers turning to the State for welfare support to protect property speculators suggests our leaders have not learnt all the hard, bitter lessons of our economic collapse.