Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2020-07-31 ============================================================ Rebecca Moynihan (LAB), Administrative Panel I welcome the Minister of State and wish him well in his new position. No doubt there are challenges ahead but my party colleagues and I will do everything we can to work constructively to solve the housing crisis and, where appropriate, support the Government. We must keep people in their homes and allow them to have hope for the future of their housing security. The ban on evictions and rent increases introduced by this Government a few months ago helped people. Those measures saw the numbers from the private rental sector entering homelessness drop significantly. The Government decision not to privilege the rights of landlords over those of tenants gave renters hope that they would not have to go back to work before it was safe to do so. Renters were also given hope that the Government would stop treating all tenants like they were only ever trying to game the system and, given the slightest chance, would lie and refuse to pay. It gave them hope that they will be able to remain in their homes. I listened to a number of previous speakers and the one issue that keeps coming up is whether what is proposed is fair, balanced and proportional in terms of the rights of landlords and the rights of tenants. I do not agree. I believe the Bill does not do that. It is neither fair nor proportional, and it does not balance rights. The Bill confirms to renters that the Government cares more about a vocal minority of landlords than it does about keeping people out of homelessness, that it cares more about punishing renters for not being homeowners or small landlords than it does about giving people a home and that it cares more about pushing through a flawed Bill than one that would actually provide effective, long-term and short-term solutions. The Minister of State told Senators that this Bill adequately protects renters affected by Covid-19, that he has extended the eviction ban into the distant future, along with the ban on rent increases, and that those who need it will be protected. It does not, however, do that. It protects those who the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has deemed deserving and he has defined that group of people in an impossibly narrow and restrictive way. This week, the Government has successfully pushed through a Bill that significantly tightens the availability of the pandemic unemployment payments, PUP. This week, it was confirmed that from 17 September the rates for the PUP would change again, putting people under even more financial strain. The Government is loosening protections for renters and cutting income supports before there is any indication that the pandemic is over. We are potentially facing into a second wave. I am surprised the Minister of State stood up in the House today and decided to spin the ESRI report published earlier this week. Contrary to the Minister of State's comments that there has been no short-term economic impact, the ESRI report notes: ... it is likely that the scale of the Covid-19 shock is such that, the longer the duration of the downturn, the higher the missed payments, and consequently, arrears rate will climb. This likelihood is magnified if the PUP or TWSS payments are withdrawn or are modified such that the effective rates of payment are considerably reduced. With the exception of the short-term support, the ESRI report also states that some 70,000 people who are currently renting do not have sufficient income remaining after their rent is paid. The Minister of State would do well to read the whole report and not selectively pull out the one or two sentences that support his arguments. The Bill does not provide any effective mechanism, beyond involving MABS, for dealing with inevitably increasing rent arrears. It is not much help to create a payment plan for people when they do not have any money to pay with. The Minister of State has previously noted that many tenants in the private rental sector have not applied for rent supplement despite the temporary loosening of requirements. I have asked some parliamentary questions, which have been artfully dodged, on what communications campaign was conducted by the Department in respect of rent supplement. The Department did not even update its website in the middle of the pandemic. The first time I heard any Minister refer to it was the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government following his appointment. For the duration of the deep lockdown crisis, there was no communication plan relating to rent supplement. The Minister failed to acknowledge this because, clearly, many people still do not know they are entitled to rent supplement, or even that rent supplement exists. Of the 700,000 people who receive the PUP, only some 8,000 rent supplement claims have been made since March. The Minister and the Department must not repeat this back-seat approach to informing people of the assistance available to them from now on. It is hard to believe that the only real mechanism for dealing with rent arrears is something of an afterthought in this Bill, which does not provide any clarity for the tenants it is actually supposed to help. The Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020 leaves so many exceptions in the fine print in the context of evictions that there is a concrete risk that homelessness will be on the rise in September once more. On this occasion, however, we will be in the middle of the second wave of the pandemic, which will have an even worse impact on the economy. The changes proposed by the Minister only afford protection from eviction until January to those who can prove that they have been impacted upon by an extremely limited set of circumstances. Unfortunately for renters, unless they have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and told to isolate or have been receipt of a financial supplement "paid for the purpose of alleviating financial hardship resulting from the loss of employment" as a result of a pandemic, they will no longer have any protections. Even if a person is a member of this limited group, he or she will still have problems and will still not be protected unless he or she provides a written declaration to the RTB and the landlord which proves not only that he or she is financially affected but also that he or she is in receipt of Government supports and, as a result, there is a significant risk that the tenancy will be terminated. There is no retrospective declaration included in the legislation and the Minister is not accepting an amendment I put forward in that regard. The Bill does not provide any guidance for what might constitute the significant risk to which I refer. The self-declaration process is unnecessarily cumbersome and places the burden on renters to prove they deserve to stay in their homes. If a renter makes a false declaration - and there is no clarification around what constitutes a false declaration - he or she is criminalised. No-fault evictions are back, substantial renovation evictions are back and evictions for the benefit of family members, including nieces and nephews, are back. At the same time, there is no provision to increase the staffing of the RTB for inspections and protection of renters. What is worse, the Bill provides for the introduction of an offence to criminalise tenants. It does not, however, provide the same treatment for those landlords who use other eviction exceptions under section 34 to get rid of tenants after August 1 in bad faith. If the House needed clear evidence of the thinking behind this Bill, it is clear in this provision. It is not fair or balanced, and it is not proportionate. It says a lot about how this new Government sees renters that this legislation has been left to the very last minute to be examined, amended and debated by both Houses. All that renters want is certainty on the status of their home. Consistently leaving measures such as this to the last minute fails to do that. I thank the Leas Cathaoirleach for indulging me with regard to time. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2020-07-31/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2020-07-31