Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Minister gives the impression that if tenants do not pay their rent, it will take years to evict them but in fact the process at the moment is that they only have to be given 28 days' notice, plus 14 days during which they are given the opportunity to pay their arrears, regardless of how small. While I accept that there can be a variety of reasons for disputes between landlords and tenants, the main reason people fall into arrears is because their rents are rocketing and the Minister has done nothing about that. There is a 4% cap on rent increases in Dublin and Cork, but there is no such cap anywhere else. Indeed, I would argue that 4% is still quite a lot. Is the Minister going to allow wage demands of 4% to be met in order to allow people to meet rent increases?

We will always have a problem with rents as long as we continue to house low-income people in the private rental sector. That sector should be shrunk in this country, not enlarged.

This is the source of evictions, poverty and homelessness, and only when the Government starts to build public housing on the scale needed, which is in the order of thousands at this point, will we be able to stop people getting into rent arrears.

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