Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2020-07-31 ============================================================ Malcolm Byrne (FF), Cultural and Educational Panel I agree with Senator Keogan and welcome the fact that the Minister of State has agreed that this information will be provided in plain English because that will be very important. As I have already mentioned, it should also be provided in a number of other languages, particularly of Polish, Lithuanian and so on, because that would be beneficial. I will make it clear to Senator Boyhan that I am neither landlord nor tenant. I share the Minister of State's concern that a piety emerges when people start to talk in defence of landlords. I was not aware of the statistics that the Minister of State outlined and it is interesting to note that 86% of landlords own only one or two properties and 70% own only one property. As others have said, many landlords are in that position accidentally. This is about the balancing of rights. I agree with what the Senator said about the declaration of interests on which Members clearly outline if they are a landlord or a tenant. I think most people are good landlords and good tenants. I would sincerely hope that situations in which Deputies refuse to pay their rent and run up a rent bill of €12,000 with a charity, stopping others from being able to rent, would also be publicised. Situations involving bad tenants also need to be addressed. Many of us know that a small minority of tenants in local authority houses do not pay their rent and leave those houses in appalling states. There is also a small minority of tenants in private rented accommodation who often leave the landlord with a very large bill because of the state in which they leave the rental house. There is another side to that. I entirely accept that there are dishonourable landlords who will use any excuse to try and increase the rent and will not provide the necessary services to tenants. Like the Minister of State, I deal with queries from both landlords and tenants about the challenges that they face. The crucial question to ask about this legislation is are we striking the right balance in an emergency situation. That was the basis on which I made my decision about the legislation. I share Senator Higgins's concerns that the Dáil decided to go into recess before the Seanad passed this Bill and that rushing of legislation is a cause for concern. I am happy, however, that the Minister of State has indicated there may be a need in the autumn to introduce primary legislation. I welcome that and if there are concerns this at least will provide safeguards until January. If concerns materialise over the summer, I hope we would have a lot longer to consider those in the autumn. --- 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