Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Earlier this year, the country was horrified at the mass evictions attempted by a vulture fund at Tyrrelstown in Dublin and a receiver at the Eden estate in Cork city. One of the stated aims of the Bill is to prevent this from happening again, and a section of the Bill is becoming known as the Tyrrelstown amendment. The Bill's original proposal was to reduce the maximum number of evictions that a landlord could carry out at one time to 19. When the Bill was debated in the Seanad, three Senators, Senators Colette Kelleher, Lynn Ruane and Alice-Mary Higgins, tabled an amendment which was carried, which reduced the figure from 19 to five. Press reports seem to indicate the Minister, Deputy Coveney, is not satisfied with this and is considering proposing on Committee or Report Stage that the number be increased from five, perhaps to ten. He is quoted in the press as saying in this regard that he does not believe we should try to bring small landlords into the category because it would disincentivise people staying in the landlord market if we do so. The Anti-Austerity Alliance believes the amendment proposed by the Opposition Senators was a modest proposal because 70% of tenants in the State live in properties owned by a landlord with four properties or fewer and would receive no protection from the measure.

Next week, we will move First Stage of a Bill to come before the House on Second Stage in January, entitled the anti-eviction Bill. The Bill will contain a proposal to outlaw sale as a grounds for eviction. Of course the landlord should have the right to sell a property, but with our Bill the tenancy as well as the ownership of the property will have to be transferred. Our anti-eviction Bill will also provide for the circumstance where a landlord states he or she needs vacant possession of the property in order that a relative might move in or move back in. To deter abuse of this reason for demanding vacant possession, the Bill will state this can and should only be done if six months' rent is paid back to the tenant by way of compensation, and in the case where a tenant has had occupancy for five years or more, one year's notice will need to be provided to the tenant.

The Bill under debate provides for the deletion of a second six-month grace period for a landlord to evict. Under current law, a tenant with six months' occupancy is classed as having a Part 4 tenancy and is considered to have a four-year lease backdated to the date the tenancy commenced. Under current law, landlords can evict in the first six months and again in the six months immediately after the expiry of the four year lease. What the Bill under debate proposes represents an improvement but still falls short of providing proper security for tenants. This is because under the Bill a landlord cannot evict if the proper notice is provided in the run-up to the expiry of the four-year lease. The anti-eviction Bill we intend to move in the House next week will provide a tenant with Part 4 leasing rights after not six months but two months, and will make the Part 4 leasing rights indefinite. In other words, it will end the right of the landlord to evict in the run-up to the expiry of the four years.

We hear a lot in debates on housing, and in the debate on the Bill, that attention needs to be paid to the question of supply. We agree with this, but not in the way in which the issue is posed from the Government benches. In one year 90,000 houses could be built, as they were in 2006, and it would not necessarily reduce rents. The assumption it would is based on crude neoclassical economics where an abstract law of supply and demand is crudely applied to housing as if it always applied in all circumstances. In fact, the only thing that will reduce rent is a supply of affordable housing and not just supply of any old housing, because what the market will supply if it is left to its own devices is unaffordable overpriced housing and rent. This is what happened with the supply during the housing bubble and what will happen again if the Government repeats history by endlessly bleating the mantra of supply as the solution to all housing problems. Relying on the invisible hand of the market to solve the rental crisis will not work because the invisible hand does not exist. What is needed is a massive new supply of affordable and social housing, and the State taking responsibility for building social housing on a very significant scale would be necessary to tackle the rental crisis.

There are many problematic aspects to the Bill and I have outlined some of them. I am sure there will be many, many amendments on Committee Stage. Although there are some positive aspects to the Bill they are mainly quite cosmetic and do not deal with the real issues. If our and other progressive amendments are not accepted on Committee Stage we will seriously consider voting against the Bill on the grounds that it does not get to grips with the housing crisis. We will see what happens when the amendments are put.

See this speech in context