Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to address my remarks to the representatives of the Irish Property Owners Association, in particular, to Mr. O'Brien who levelled a degree of criticism towards my contribution earlier on. One of the charges that was made was of a certain ignorance of the sector. I do not believe that to be the case. I offered Mr O'Brien the opportunity to enlighten me and the committee on the claim he made in his presentation to the committee that the threat of withdrawing selling as a ground for termination has already resulted in some investors leaving the market. We have a Bill here which is at the early part of stage 3 of progressing through the Houses of the Oireachtas. I expressed some surprise that the content of those Bills would be forcing a flight of capital at this point, and I asked Mr. O'Brien to provide evidence. He provided evidence of investors leaving the market. I did not hear any evidence of people leaving the market because of the possibility of sale as a ground for eviction being removed. Perhaps he might enlighten me on that point in his reply.

One matter that I am very aware of is the people who crowd out my constituency clinic every single Monday morning, and have done so in recent weeks, months and well beyond that, and who bring stories to me about how they have received a notice to quit because their landlord is selling the property. These are often family people with young children who feel, with some reason, that they are on the verge of being evicted into homelessness.

I will give an example of the people from one block of apartments where 15 or 17 families approached me - some of them crowded out my clinic - to ask where they were to go and what they were to do. Their landlord, a vulture fund, was evicting them on the grounds of the renovation of the property. The renovation of the property was to get around the issue of the rent pressure zone, RPZ, to hike up the rents and go for a more affluent tenant. They fought a battle on that and pushed back, which is very much to their credit. People approach me who are extremely upset and are crying and everyone present has had that experience. Mr. O'Brien said that I should do my job. As far as I am concerned, I am doing my job here today. It is my job to represent the woman who comes to my office with the eviction notice and the family facing homelessness because of the threat of a "renoviction" to make more profit for a vulture fund. Mr. O'Brien's job may be to represent other people, which is fair enough. This is my job and I am doing it.

If the number of people joining the homelessness lists for this January are anything like those in January of 2018, 2017 or 2016, then the numbers of people officially homeless will go over the 10,000 mark for the first time in the history of the State. Threshold and other organisations doing similar work tell us that the number one cause of homelessness in the State today is eviction from the private rental sector. That is an unchallengeable and incontestable fact. It is insanity to continue to allow these evictions to take place in the midst of the largest housing and homelessness crisis in the history of the State. This Bill aims to staunch the flow with strong practical - and from the point of view of ordinary people - reasonable measures, such as banning the sale of property as grounds for eviction. We have established during these hearings that this is the case in law already in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark. It seems to me that the highest rental investment profits in Europe are being made in Ireland. Whatever way one looks at the figures, Ireland is up at the top of the table in that regard.

It is a bit much for me where there is a lot of sympathy being offered to representatives of the Irish Property Owners Association, IPOA, here today. It does not sit well with me to listen to the poor mouth for an hour and a half while fabulous superprofits are being made by many landlords, including corporate landlords, in this country.

What is being said is that if one brings the standards and rights for tenants up to the level of other European countries and follow what is best practice for tenants' rights and entitlements, that landlords are going to turn tail and flee the market. There is a significant element of bluff in that to maintain and defend those rental profits. If there is any degree of truth in that, what it actually points to is not giving more tax breaks and concessions to landlords but to the need for the State to provide a genuine alternative by way of significant and massive investment in social housing to provide a roof over our heads with decent rights and conditions for our people.