Professor Eoin O'Sullivan:

I certainly think the moratorium needs to be extended. For how long, it is hard to know at the moment, but I would suggest that it be reviewed every quarter. The current moratorium will last until roughly the middle of March. It should be extended by three months, reviewed at the end of those three months and then extended if necessary. That might get over the difficulty the Attorney General regularly has with this issue of the balance between landowners' and tenants' rights post Covid. Exit is no longer a hypothesis; we can demonstrate that the moratorium has dramatically slowed down the flow of households into emergency accommodation. Therefore, if we do want to do that, we know that this is a policy tool that is available to us.