Private Rental Sector: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2021-03-08 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I am very happy to speak in favour of the Sinn Féin motion today. It highlights, as Senator Moynihan said, that this legislation comes through again and again. It went through the previous Oireachtas multiple times. Every time the rental tenancies or any of these Bills come through there is never time to substantively discuss the issues. That is why the debate today is really welcome. We see again and again a new emergency measure, a partial fix or, as we saw in the rental tenancies legislation that went through last autumn, unfortunately, some real steps backwards which I am very concerned about. Regarding the numbers of evictions, the eviction protection is very welcome. It was good that Ireland acted relatively promptly on that and that it was extended. However, an opportunity was missed, as we highlighted during the debate last autumn. I put forward two amendments, one which would extend the rental protection from evictions to 20 km and another which would give the Minister the discretion to extend and link it to another public health direction if he wished. That was not taken up, which is why we now have this situation whereby if we move from 5 km, we create jeopardy for people. Unfortunately, because of the legislation passed last year, the jeopardy is now greater than it ever was. I urge the Government to promptly address a measure I am extremely concerned about before the ban on evictions is lifted. We know how quickly action can come from the previous listing of evictions in autumn when we saw 360 eviction notices served almost immediately, as soon as the ban was lifted. The provisions in the legislation last year meant that if a tenant was just 28 days in arrears, less than one month's paycheck, there would be just 28 days to pay that back. This applied even to Part 4 tenants, who may have lived for ten or 15 years with security of long-term tenure, and may have had one of the most difficult years of their lives. I am extraordinarily concerned about the jeopardy we will see because of that 28 days arrears provision, to allow evictions, that came into new legislation last year. It has not yet had an impact because of the suspension, but it is an extraordinary jeopardy. I urge the Government to address it as a matter of priority and, while doing so, to address the issue of the 5 km and 20 km. That is a small piece of legislation that could come through these Houses very promptly. I want to highlight some other loopholes that have affected Part 4 tenancies in Ireland. These are situations where a good thing is being used as a lever for insecurity - for example, retrofitting, which is something we want to see happen. How can we look more carefully at some of the provisions around things like retrofitting to ensure that retrofitting does not mean eviction? How can we ensure that the carrying out of substantial refurbishments does not allow for eviction and then a hike in rent? We need to address each of those loopholes because behind each loophole are multiple households. Those are the kinds of issues that need to be addressed and that is why there is urgency in the motion which has been put forward. The Senators who tabled the motion are looking at concerns about which all Members have often heard. We hear about those who wish to own homes and so on. The problem is that the State has been incentivising very large investment firms. All Members know when that first happened. It happened when the capital gains tax waiver was brought in and there was an instant spike in the market. We were warned about it but it went on for another year. The signals have been clear. It is a significant and horrifying concern when not only are home units which may be occupied being traded as speculative commodities - and the co-living units and student accommodation in particular are used as trading counters rather than offering homes - but we have measures which have actually rewarded that kind of practice. We have seen that again and again. The strategic housing development mechanism which we were told would deliver housing unfortunately did not do so. Only 30% of properties that received that fast-track planning permission have been built. That is why I am extraordinarily concerned about the Land Development Agency proposals. I think we will see a short-circuiting of local council involvement and the building of homes in neighbourhoods by a Land Development Agency which is only currently required to provide 40% to 50% social and affordable housing. I hope that requirement will be amended. We need to be realistic. First, what is counted as affordable is not affordable for most. Second, social and affordable housing combined represent more than enough of a social mix. We do not need 40% or 50% of properties to be reserved for what is, effectively, a speculative market. That is not a logical part of the kind of arguments we hear that we need to have a mix and that is why it cannot be all social housing. Right since Davitt, what people have wanted is security of tenure. They want to know that they can plan their lives, enrol their children in a school and have those children go to that school for six years. That is the security that we could give if local authorities were being empowered and resourced to build public housing on public land and to act as public landlords with rent levels reflecting the fact that people's wages go up and down over the course of a lifetime. That is the really transformative vision. I urge the Minister of State to engage with all those in his Department who may be embedded in old models of thinking and to push new proposals forward. --- 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/2021-03-08/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-03-08