Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody for their submissions, especially in such a short timescale. As always, we are keen to see a more detailed submission. Will Ms O'Reilly provide more detail on her concerns about the non-purchase heads, on the slip mechanism and vacancy on transfer? The committee would like to hear more about those.

Mr. Deverell made an important point on vacant possession. When I read the Bill, it seems to ignore that, from my experience, a large number of landlords who are choosing to sell wait until the property is vacant before putting it on the market because there is a belief they may get a higher price. There seems to be an assumption, with the first and second offer, that that is the point of sale. I invite Mr. Davitt and Mr. Deverell to give a view on how likely a landlord is to sell vacant rather than with a tenant in situ. How will that element of the Bill work?

Nobody mentioned, and I invite anybody to discuss, the further elements related to non-rental matters. As far as I understand, it is the Supreme Court judgment on the case taken about the WRC. Perhaps that is more for Threshold. Does anybody have views on those? I suggest that if Mr. Davitt does not at this stage, he could come back to it in his written submission. It is quite a significant element of the Bill.

I support anything that increases the opportunities of the tenant to purchase a property at the point of receiving an eviction notice. It is a sensible objective. I have concerns about the Bill. It is badly titled. It is not a right to buy; it is a requirement to offer. The legal mechanism is that a landlord is required to offer not once but twice rather than somebody having a right to buy. It looks like a scheme that states its objective is A but will not necessarily lead to a lot of actual additional sales. I genuinely have a worry. It is not unlike all of the faffing around with the changes to the fair deal scheme. When we saw that in operation, very few properties came into the rental market. I would be interested in everybody's views on the impact of the Bill in its current, unamended form on the number of tenants who may avoid homelessness and purchase the property who might otherwise not have been able to.