The housing minister has been forced to launch a NEW attempt to fix a drafting error in the law behind rent caps.

Simon Coveney was forced into the embarrassing move, after his first attempt to fix the problem was exposed as flawed by opposition parties.

The hold-up caused by the mistakes means the measures won't get passed this week - and that the Dáil will have to reconvene on Monday.

Debate on the rent caps had been making slow but steady progress last night - until Sinn Fein’s Eoin O’Broin spotted a significant error in how the law was written.

Instead of allowing a 4% increase every year, in so-called ‘rent pressure zones’, the law actually allowed a 4% increase for every year that the rent had previously gone unchanged.

That meant that people coming out of a two-year rent freeze could have been hit by 8% - or even higher, if their landlord had let their current rates go unchanged for longer.

Minister Coveney then published what he hoped was a quick fix amendment - but that in turn was picked apart by Sinn Féin's Pearse Doherty.

A second draft had to be introduced this morning - but the lost time means the Dáil will also have to sit on Monday in an effort to make sure the measures are introduced to law by Christmas.

Our political correspondent Gavan Reilly filed this report for Today FM's National Lunchtime News: