Madam, – I would like to respond to the letter of Thomas Jackson of Hickey Co Ltd (June 11th). As a professional property asset manager I see very few cases of landlords not co-operating with their retail tenants who make properly supported cases for rent rebates.
Landlords do not want to see tenants go out of business and have empty shops and no rental income. However, some tenants seeking rent reductions can afford their rents and make cases that are unsupportable by the underlying facts and thus get refused rent rebates. Others are just poor traders who are looking to be subsidised by their landlords.
Accordingly I am not surprised by the 19 per cent of tenants in Wexford who were refused rent rebates.
The sole aim of the Wexford study of 136 retail shops, of which I was a sponsor, was to find out the facts of what actually was happening on the ground. This was to counterbalance the sweeping generalities being peddled by various individuals and pressure groups trying to force the new Government to introduce unnecessary and damaging legislation on rent reviews. Mr Jackson, as secretary of Hickey and Co, with 18 shops will have all the facts and figures as to how many landlords he approached seeking rent reductions, who gave him reductions, those that did not and why, and his profitability in each of his 18 locations. Also he will know to what extent any trading problems are a result of the economic recession as opposed to recent upward-only rent reviews in each of his shops.
I would call on him and all those who are seeking a blanket solution to produce facts and stop arguing their case on unsupported allegations and hard luck cases.
Please let us have the facts, preferably independently vouched and then we can see if there is a need to change the law, and if so target such change. I believe the facts will speak a lot louder than a lot of innuendo and rhetoric. – Yours, etc,