I move:
That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2015 so that the provisions in that Act for tenant deposits to be sent to the Residential Tenancies Board are commenced within 90 days of the passing of this Act.
I am introducing this Bill to protect tenants' deposits today because it is one of the most common and damaging forms of theft - a type of theft that goes, almost always, unpunished. I refer to landlords stealing their tenants' deposits.
Deposit theft accounts for almost one-in-five cases taken to the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB. It is the second biggest reason cases are taken by tenants. In 2021, the RTB found in favour of tenants in 94% of cases and ruled that their deposit should be fully or partially refunded by the landlord.
Anyone who has ever rented in this country will have a story of how their landlord stole some or all of their deposit. It is so commonplace that Threshold describes it as a normal experience.
What makes this everyday injustice all the more disgusting is that it involves landlords who are much better off than their tenants stealing from people who are on far lower incomes than they are. According to the CSO, the average net wealth of owner-occupiers is almost €304,000. Landlords, by definition, almost always own more than one property so their wealth will be much greater than that. Let us compare that to renters. Their average net wealth is only €5,300. For many renters, a deposit of €1,000 or €2,000 is the only savings they have, the only thing standing between them and homelessness. I am frequently contacted by constituents who are facing or actually in homelessness because a greedy landlord or estate agent stole their deposit. One mother whose landlord stole her deposit is now living in emergency homeless accommodation and cannot afford to take her landlord to court to get her money back. The Residential Tenancies Board has refused to help, apparently because the landlord never registered the tenancy. It keeps telling her to contact Threshold which, in turn, sends her back to the RTB. She and her child are now trapped in homeless accommodation because a greedy landlord stole the only savings she had.
I also have cases of constituents who are reliant on homeless HAP, where the local authority provided them with a deposit but the landlord or letting agent has stolen it and the constituents are being refused money for a second deposit. They are threatened with homelessness because they do not have the money themselves for a new deposit and the council will not provide it.
In another case, a landlord is threatening to steal a tenant's deposit unless she moves out on the date on the notice to quit, regardless of whether that notice is legal or not. Threatening to steal a deposit is a means of coercion for landlords who use it to evict tenants and dissuade them from taking cases to the RTB. Of course this Government knows this, as successive Governments before it knew it. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have been promising to introduce a deposit protection scheme since 2011. It was legislated for in 2015 but never enacted. Housing for All acknowledges that, "deposit retention can cause serious hardship for tenants, as many will require the return of their deposit in order to access alternative rental accommodation." Action 2.12 of Housing for All, which has been sitting there since 2021, was to "examine the creation of a system of holding rental deposits, informed by international experience", but still, the Government has chosen not to act. Why? It is because it is a Government of landlords, by landlords for landlords. It is a Government that is now waging war on tenants, threatening the rip up the rent pressure zones and signalling to landlords and vulture funds to let it rip even more than they have already.
My Bill would enact the Government's own 2015 legislation to set up a deposit protection scheme managed by the RTB. Instead of landlords holding tenant's deposits and using them as a form of power over tenants, all deposits would instead be lodged with the RTB which would adjudicate on any disputes. We also want to see radical reform of the RTB. Tenants' unions should be represented so the dispute resolution system is not stacked against tenants and in favour of landlords. I would like to see landlords who rob their tenants, force them to live in slum conditions or evict them illegally prosecuted and sent to prison. Most ordinary people would agree there are few worse crimes than making people homeless, yet the legal system treats criminal landlords with kid gloves. This Bill is a small first step towards justice for renters and only a landlord or a landlords' government would object to it.