Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 5 December 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

General Scheme of the Residential Tenancies (Right to Purchase) Bill: Discussion

Photo of Rebecca MoynihanRebecca Moynihan (Labour)
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To follow up on Deputy O’Callaghan’s point, there is a bad idea and there is bad legislation. I think this is potentially a good idea but what we are hearing from both sides and across the board is that the legislation is not necessarily going to fulfil what is there as intended. The landlords and investors seem to be saying that this is happening already, so I cannot see the issue with them being willing and wanting to sell to existing tenants. The idea behind this is that it avoids homeless and extends the tenant in situscheme to private tenants and long-term private tenants. The issue in the middle that we need to tackle is vacant possession. There is a strong argument being made by the IPOA that tenants' rights need to be subordinate essentially to getting the biggest deal landlords can get as investors. The question for us as legislators is on which side of that do we fall. With that said, there are probably significant problems with and unintended consequences of this legislation.

To the folks from Threshold, in their experience, how many tenants do they think something like this would be helpful for or to, or is it such an insignificant number that it is almost not worthwhile to do this?

Mr. Davitt wanted to talk about the slip rule. I have a little bit of time so I will cede some of the time for him to follow up on that question, which I think came from Deputy Higgins.

Regarding partial transfer, if what the witnesses are proposing is to take out the selling of it to family members, how many family members would they limit that to? I think Threshold already explained the issue about partial transfer in that it essentially gives another ground and an element, so that is something for us to look at.

I will hand over my time now.