Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To be helpful, there are multiple protections in place to ensure that people cannot simply be evicted out of their properties. Those protections remain today. On the basis of what Deputy Pearse Doherty said, if a landlord can evict somebody easily, bring someone else in and use that as an excuse to increase the rent, that is what would be happening on a regular basis. By designating rent pressure zones and imposing the limit of 4%, we are trying to ensure that there will not be the capacity, when someone changes tenancies, to significantly increase rent. The whole point of what we are trying to do is to not incentivise removing people from tenancies in order to bring in other tenants and thereby jack up the rent.

We are also implementing a series of measures to try to ensure that we extend tenancies from four to six years or if it is an unfurnished property, to look at ten-year tenancies. We are actually moving towards what I believe most Members, including myself, would like to get to in time whereby there would be indefinite tenancies in the future. We are taking a step towards that but it is wrong to try to foster the impression that all of a sudden we are creating this huge incentive to get rid of tenants and take in the next person so that we can increase rent by 4%. The whole point of this measure is to try to stabilise the rental market in order to ensure that the tenancies people are on currently and the protections introduced by Deputy Kelly, as Minister, in terms of a two-year rent freeze before there is another review, will remain intact in pressure zones until the next review comes up. When the review comes up, thereafter the rent increases can only be 4% and the rules whereby the rent can only be increased once a year will apply. That is the position. If there is a change of tenancy, a landlord would have to have a good reason for that and it cannot be because he or she wants to get somebody out in order to jack up the rent.

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