Sir, – Before the Government’s new housing plan was even launched, all parties of the left loudly condemned it, with some proclaiming their ongoing demand for an eviction ban and a rent freeze for the rental market.

In reality, the housing sector could expect a considerable shock from an alternative leftist government in Ireland.

Overburdensome regulations, high taxation and ritual anti-landlord sentiment have already seriously damaged the rental sector and the housing market. Rent caps introduced in Ireland have been a self-inflicted disaster – the private rental sector has suffered a complete collapse in investment and now the current Government is desperately seeking to reverse this brutal reality.

Landlords have lost significant control over their properties in an ever-changing regulatory environment, but the left is seldom satisfied no matter how draconian the regulations are on property owners.

Economist Assar Lindbeck demonstrated the destructive nature of excessive regulation on rental markets and ample evidence exists from throughout the world that rent freezing, eviction bans and other excessive regulations will reduce housing supply, thereby driving up long-term price pressures and homelessness.

This easily understood point is now indisputably proven in Ireland where the volume of landlord exits has grown to frenzied proportions. In late 2016, in response to populist pressure and lobbying, rent controls were introduced here.

At the time the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) said there were 319,822 private rented tenancies. The RTB says approximately 241,000 private rental tenancies now remain, a loss of nearly 79,000 tenancies while our population increases significantly.

Sinn Féin and other leftist parties would freeze rents and ban evictions. Who would invest in the rental sector when revenue is frozen, but costs are not?

In Germany, for example, Berlin’s rent-fixing policy caused a dramatic fall-off in properties available to rent and a mass exodus of landlords, similar to what has happened here in Ireland. Think about what an outright rent freeze and eviction ban would do.

Further, Sinn Féin’s housing p