2% max rental increase allowed inflation 7% plus

If the tenant is paying the rent and all gas, internet, electricity bills why does the landlord need an inflation matching rent? Everything is being covered as agreed at the start of tenancy.

Interest rate rise, sure the rent can be looked at but the tenant will never know that situation and many properties are long since paid off.

What changed for the landlord? If they are not paying utility bills and do little upkeep what changed suddenly to need a rent increase?

If you believe in this position, why not force a rent cut of 50%? Why not force a price cut of 50% on petrol? Or iphones? The reality is that it is an irrational idea and only tolerated because houses evoke emotional responses and it is electorally popular.

The 2% rent cap is bad, because it causes market distortion, hurting renters. The expected effects of rent controls, don't happen overnight, but what we see in the market now is consistent with those predictions.

To be fair the value of our investments increased by more than 7% in the last year.

You can't have everything!

While the long-term effects of rent controls are largely perverse (as evidenced by the exodus of private landlords), a fixed 2% increase irrespective of overall inflation is just plain daft. Better to have a formula related to overall prices or earnings, if you have to have controls.

How many times has the 2% rule changed over the past decade? Shows that they just make daft things up.

Appliance replacement isn't covered by the tenant. Nor are repairs to plumbing or electrics or the billding (unless the tenant broke things). Or property tax. Or insurance. Of management company charges.

Landlords will just leave if the government is determined to disadvantage them, and have been. It appears to me that the idea is to be replace Irish landlords with huge foreign trusts, the infamous vulture funds, who can have the means to spread their costs over a great many unit. However they have no interest whatsoever in anyone who cannot afford a premium rent unless someone (say the County Council) pays for it. It is now also nearly impossible to get a mortgage for a rental property and property costs cannot be written off in the same way as other businesses. The government, no government is going to rack up taxes to mass build council houses, at least not for Irish people (or so Roderic O'Gorman envisages), vulture funds have no interest in poorer tenants, and so private rental should fill the gap. It cannot because government seems content to squeeze them regardless of the social cost. The government is determined that a section of business owners cannot be allowed to cover their costs. Rent control just means no one will enter the market except large scale property speculators with replacement (appliances, furniture) and repairs becoming ever more difficult.

I don't really see it as a business. More like a speculative investment with some dividends thrown in.

Do you know what it leads to after you run them all away?

The 2% rent increase limit was a compromise from those calling for an out and out rent freeze, but if we keep seeing rents increasing on average, then a rent freeze will come, SF will ensure to that. That's how I see it, not that I in any way agree with it.