An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2023-03-21
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Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West

I want to acknowledge that the Deputy and her party have a different view on this, but it is a different view from all the Government parties, Sinn Féin and the Labour Party, who all acknowledge that the eviction ban has to end at a certain point. I appreciate that People Before Profit-Solidarity has a different view even from the rest of the left on this.
It is true there are different laws in different European countries. There is a wide variation of different laws in different European countries but where permanent, no-fault eviction bans exist in other European countries, people would have bought a property on that basis and they would have known that. The Deputy is essentially saying that we should change our law retrospectively in Ireland so if somebody bought a property thinking they could move back into it when they came back home from Australia or Britain in a year or two, that would be taken away from them. I do not think those countries ever passed a law that retrospectively changed the rules. It would be one thing to say that if somebody was going to buy a house now, they would have to rent it out and could never regain possession of it, even if they wanted to move back in, but to change it retrospectively would almost certainly be unconstitutional-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-03-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-03-21