Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Cheann Comhairle agus déanaim comhghairdeas léi as ucht a post nua. Guím ádh mór uirthi.

I thank all of the contributors who brought forward their views on the Bill. We will move to Committee Stage on Thursday and I want to give a commitment to Members that I and my officials will consider any amendments brought forward, and where they are reasonable, practical and can be introduced, we will certainly consider them very openly.

I am also conscious of the fact that the Government has only been in situfor four weeks and this is quite a detailed Bill. We need to pass it and have its provisions up and running from 2 August. The measures that currently pertain in this country are based on public health grounds. They are, and always have been, emergency measures. Like any Minister, I was always concerned about and responsible for matters in that regard. Any protections that we afford to tenants and people in the private rented sector should be robust, durable and should endure. Apart from a few on the extreme side of this debate, no one suggests the emergency measures could continue for an indeterminate length of time. From my perspective, I and my Department had to consider how we can transition out of the emergency measures introduced on public health grounds to more permanent supports.

I will address some of the points raised. There are effectively two parts to the Bill. One is the Covid emergency protections and extending them to those who need them most until 10 January 2021. That is very clear. The Bill will have no effect on evictions or rent increases. Evictions cannot be imposed on a large cohort of people and there cannot be rent increases. It is perfectly right and proper that I, as Minister with responsibility for housing, together with the Government, do that. There is no ambiguity about the measure. It is not cumbersome. It is in the Bill in black and white.

I have noted comments from some Members regarding issues with literacy and language. We will deal with these issues. In any case, where a declaration needs to be signed, assistance will be provided where required. Language barriers or literacy levels will not be an impediment to enter into these protections. I ask people who suggest otherwise to be a little bit responsible about what they say; there has been a small bit of scaremongering in that regard.

We are all well aware of the Citizens Information services across the country. Deputies and other public representatives around the country also provide assistance. The Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, has now been brought into the tent to help with rent arrears. These bodies will advise people on what they need to do. They do not turn away people who have literacy issues, do not speak English or are the new Irish. Some have had said protections will not be afforded to new Irish communities or people who have issues with literary, which is simply not true. We will make sure that will not happen. Others have raised this matter as a genuine issue and concern, and I take that in the spirit in which it has been raised.

The overriding priority for me as Minister with responsibility for housing, the Government, the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, and others is to provide more permanent housing solutions for individuals and families. A core part of the programme for Government is the delivery of more public homes on public lands. We will empower our local authorities to do even more of that and provide affordable housing for purchase and for rent for working people.

The first meeting in my Department each week is with the homeless delivery unit, which is made up of stakeholders to whom other Deputies have referred and whom I thank for their interaction. We meet at 8 a.m. every Monday morning to determine what we need to do in the short-term to tackle homelessness across this country and to protect the most vulnerable.

As Minister, and when I was an Opposition Deputy and spokesperson, I had the pleasure of visiting many outreach services across the city and beyond. As I mentioned to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle outside the Chamber, I will move outside of Dublin during the month of August and visit regional towns and cities where I can meet our partners and people who do fantastic work in the area of homelessness.

I must mention the tragedy of the five homeless individuals who have died over the past week. What has happened pains me and I want to pass on my deepest and sincerest condolences to the deceased and their families and friends at what is a really distressing time. Many of these individuals have, unfortunately, complex and chaotic lives. I know our homeless services engaged and worked with the individuals concerned. What has happened is particularly distressing for those staff.

As Minister with responsibility for housing I feel very deeply about this issue. I know from the people who work in the sector that it is something they feel deeply about and I, like, I am sure all of my colleagues, want to put on the record of the House my deepest sympathies for the families. The interaction of health services with housing bodies presents a challenge. One of the successes of the Covid emergency has been the interaction between health and housing authorities in dealing with the most vulnerable, namely, the homeless community. I intend to keep that going.

I have met the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and there will be a formal bilateral meeting on housing and health to determine how we can keep the wraparound services provided to our homeless communities in place. Homeless people have come out of cocooning with better health outcomes than when they went into homelessness services. We need to make sure that the system is maintained. The three parties in government have committed to that in the programme for Government. We need a Government-wide response to homelessness that has health at its centre. We will maintain that.

On the protections in the Bill, we had to be guided by legal advice. There is no question about that. Anyone who says otherwise is incorrect. We must make sure that any measures we introduce are legal and constitutional and can be implemented. I have examined the large cohort of people whose salaries and wages have been affected, who have lost their jobs or whose tenancies are protected by HAP, emergency rent supplement and other measures. They will be protected in the Bill.

I want to deal with some of the matters raised by Threshold. I welcome its engagement on the Bill. It has been most helpful, and I will expand on that. I am also being guided by what has been done in other jurisdictions and countries with regard to bans on evictions. Deputy Ó Broin will be aware that no eviction ban was brought forward in the North. All the Sinn Féin Minister for Communities did in the North was to extend the notice period from four to 12 weeks.

That was it. It certainly pales into insignificance when one looks at the measures brought forward in the Oireachtas by all parties in March and is certainly greatly inferior to the legislation here in front of the Dáil.

I note and have read Sinn Féin's response to the housing and eviction ban and rent pause, which comprised a one-page piece of legislation that did not actually go to the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Advisers. It did not mention evictions or bans on evictions, but dealt specifically with rent freezes for a three-year period. That is a one-page piece of legislation versus a robust Bill that deals not only with the current crisis and pandemic but also with measures that will endure into the future by way of the rent arrears procedures, which I will cover now.

I am aware that the moratorium had a significant impact on presentations to homeless services. Along with officials from my Department, I have been meeting the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive, DRHE, on a weekly basis throughout this crisis. The DRHE has cited the moratorium and the reduction in family breakdowns as key contributors to the reduced level of presentations. Local authorities across all regions, including the DRHE, are aware that the current moratorium cannot continue indefinitely and have been preparing for increased presentations when it expires.

As Members know, the moratorium was extended on 27 June and again by me on 20 July, at which stage it was becoming apparent that the continuation of the protections in their current format was increasingly at variation with the relaxation of restrictions in wider society and in the economy. Restrictions on estate agents were lifted in the second phase of relaxation and lettings of rental properties are now proceeding, underpinned by new operating procedures to prevent the spread of the virus. This enables tenants to move on where accommodation is no longer required. Many students returned home when universities closed, and landlords are now able to place properties back on the market in response to new demands from a range of sources, including prospective tenants who have returned from abroad.

Conditions at the end of July are very different from conditions when they were introduced on 27 March. That is why we are now introducing, as I have mentioned, a more targeted and focused Bill that is grounded in economic rather than public health considerations. We extended the current moratorium until the end of this week to make sure the Bill has time to pass through both Houses of the Oireachtas.

The new Bill aims to respond directly to the challenges presented by Covid-19 by targeting additional supports to those who are having difficulty paying rent because of loss of earnings as a result of the pandemic. We know that sectors like retail and hospitality are among the worst hit by Covid-19 and that workers in these sectors are more likely to be in rented accommodation. We know that other grounds for termination such as intent to sell, family use and renovation were sometimes used when the underlying issue may have been associated with rent arrears. That is why we introduced the enforcement protections under Part 7A of the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2019 relating to complaints, investigations and sanctions, which empowers the RTB to sanction landlords who evict tenants on grounds related to intent to sell, family use or substantial renovation when they fail to act in accordance with the ground cited. We have resourced the RTB to enforce these provisions through increased funding from this Department. The RTB is building up a team of 15 staff to enforce these tenancy protections and almost 200 investigations have been initiated since the unit was set up. I am keeping a particularly close eye on this and will condemn anyone who uses these grounds of eviction erroneously. They will be prosecuted.

The unit also oversees breaches of rent pressure zone protections to ensure unlawful rent increases can also be identified and landlords prosecuted. We have also extended notice periods to provide that even where a valid notice of termination is served, a tenancy of just one year's duration would benefit from a 120-day notice period. We know that citing an intent to sell as a termination ground does not always mean a landlord intends to sell and tenants are now protected from that through legislation with RTB enforcement. It has become clear that the underlying reason for many tenancy terminations is rent arrears. The main sources of RTB disputes since 2013 are rent arrears and overholding. In 2019, rent arrears were cited in 28% of all RTB dispute applications. That is a particular reason we are focusing this legislation specifically on rent arrears.

Unfortunately, we also know that some landlords have left the market. In 2016, there were almost 320,000 registered residential tenancies and by 2019 this had declined to approximately 303,000, which represented a reduction of almost 17,000. Clearly, many landlords are selling their properties. Some 70% of those landlords own just one rental property and 86% own just one or two. The vast majority of our landlords are small-scale, mom-and-pop style landlords. Covid-19 will have affected them as well as tenants. We will not keep landlords in the market by banning evictions indefinitely. Where a landlord has a legitimate need, he or she should be able to terminate a tenancy. It is reasonable to expect, especially during the fall-out from Covid-19, that some landlords might need to provide a home for a family member or to occupy the properties themselves. Equally, financial pressures may well force a landlord to sell a property. I know of such cases. The law should not prevent this from happening.

Clearly, we need protections that balance the rights of tenants and landlords equally to encourage more landlords to remain in the market. This Bill aims to do just that by respecting legitimate rights to terminate tenancies for sale, family use or renovation, with the enforcement safeguard of the RTB, while at the same time supporting tenants who are most at risk of arrears through early intervention. This can help to prolong tenancies to the benefit of tenants and landlords. The Bill focuses on tenants who experience rent arrears and aims to protect them through a combination of short-term measures and longer-term structural changes.

Research published today by the ESRI shows that the combination of income supports such as the pandemic unemployment payment and the wage subsidy scheme, combined with a decline in consumption during lockdown, means the incidence of arrears increased by just one percentage point, from 10% to 11%, during the first three months of the pandemic. The protections put in place at the beginning have filled the gap. However, the research signals the risk of increased rent arrears in the future when consumption levels rise and income supports are wound down. Recent announcements that the pandemic unemployment payment is to be extended and the wage subsidy scheme replaced until the end of March 2021 by an employment wage subsidy scheme will help to continue to abate the loss of income. In addition, the provisions of the Bill will enable greater recourse to rent supplement, which was also identified in the ESRI report as a key tool to address arrears, at an earlier stage in the process via referral of tenants in arrears to MABS. There is a provision in this Bill to make sure that happens.

The Bill will also oblige landlords when issuing notices of arrears and notices of termination on foot of arrears to copy these notices to the RTB. As well as enabling early intervention via MABS, these provisions also respond to another recommendation in the ESRI report on the need to gather data on the incidence of arrears. The provisions contained in this Bill mean that every time a landlord notifies a tenant that he or she is in arrears, the RTB will become aware of it and the tenant will be immediately provided with access to support. Building up data in this way will lead to a better understanding of the market and the impact of the arrears.

The Bill also recognises the immediate risk facing those in arrears and provides that where a tenant declares himself or herself to be at significant risk of tenancy termination and eligible for Covid-19-related supports, notice periods are extended and rent increases prohibited until 10 January 2021. This means that any tenant who is in receipt of Covid-19-related support and is experiencing difficulty with rent payments can avail of extended notice protections to enable him or her to remain in the rental property without any rent increase until 10 January 2021. It could not be clearer.

Threshold is the only specialist advice and advocacy service for tenants facing housing problems in the private rented sector in Ireland. It advocates for policy and legal change in relation to housing and proposes solutions which are informed by evidence from its work in advising tenants and protecting tenancies. As was mentioned earlier, it recently published a series of policy proposals for the programme for Government in the context of the pandemic. Among the proposals it put forward in its document on the future of the rental sector in Ireland was an extension of the moratorium on evictions. Through the Bill, a moratorium has effectively been provided for anyone at risk of rent arrears and eligible for Covid-19-related supports until 10 January 2021 at a minimum, a period of almost five and a half months.

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This builds on current protections, which prohibited evictions for a total of over four months since 27 March this year.

Threshold also proposed a revision to the way landlords can evict tenants for rent arrears. This Bill now provides that: the arrears notice goes to the RTB; the services of the Money Advice & Budgeting Service are made available as early as possible; the notice period is extended further; and if a termination is disputed, the input from engagement with MABS will be considered as part of any adjudication in that regard.

Threshold proposed the implementation of a moratorium on upward rent reviews. Rent increases for anyone at risk of arrears and eligible for Covid-19-related supports are prohibited until 10 January 2021. Taken together with the current moratorium on rent increases, this means that tenants at risk of rent arrears and in receipt of Covid-19-related supports will have benefited from a rent freeze from 27 March this year to 10 January 2021.

Threshold rightly called for a greater level of assistance to tenants who accrue rent arrears. I have now ensured that early engagement with the RTB and MABS will ensure a greater level of assistance, including through recourse to rent supplement. I again advise those who may be in difficulty with rent payments that the emergency rent supplement is available for them. They should contact their local welfare offices to get assistance in that regard. Fewer than 8,000 people are in receipt of that payment and people need to know it is available to them.

Threshold also asked for the notice period for rent arrears to be revised. Again, this is being done in the Bill. This period has been increased from 28 days to 90 days for those at risk of tenancy terminations and in receipt of Covid-19 payments.

Threshold asked that the grounds on which a tenant can be evicted for arrears be revised. Notices of rent arrears must now be copied to the RTB and the 28-day period for payment of outstanding rent starts when the RTB or the tenant receives the notice, whichever is later. In addition, the notice of termination must also be sent to the RTB at the same time as it is sent to the tenant, otherwise the notice is not valid, and if the termination is subject of adjudication, the adjudicator must have regard to any advice received from MABS as part of the process. Again, this is another very significant change in protection.

These policy proposals clearly demonstrate the importance Threshold places on addressing rent arrears and this is borne out by its statistics on rent arrears. In the period from March to May 2020, it experienced a seven-fold increase in queries from tenants in rent arrears. Queries increased to 270 in 2020, up from 38 queries in the corresponding period in 2019. As per Threshold’s own welcome research, these measures are being targeted at those who need it most.

The measures which I have presented here today clearly demonstrate that the Bill is well aligned with the policy objectives of Threshold and with the most pressing needs of tenants in the Irish housing market. The approach I have adopted is supported by the findings of research by the ESRI, which recognise the potential for a build-up of arrears, the need for accurate data on the incidence of arrears and the role that supports such as rent supplement and bodies such as MABS can play in helping tenants in difficulty. The approach I have adopted here today complements measures introduced last year to protect tenants where the landlord cites intent to sell or family use but fails to act in accordance with the grounds cited.

I sincerely thank my fellow Deputies for their contribution to today's debate on this important and urgent Bill. I look forward to going through the Bill in greater detail with them on Thursday. I earnestly hope that the Bill can be passed swiftly so that these enhanced protections can be implemented before the summer recess to help provide secure accommodation to all.

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