Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Last week, Threshold published its annual report 2017. The report revealed that 32% of the 75,000 calls it received last year were in regard to eviction notices. The previous year, 2016, eviction notices accounted for 14% of calls to Threshold. Calls regarding eviction notices have more than doubled in one year. According to Threshold in Ireland, and in Europe generally, the private rental sector is the leading source of homelessness through evictions, legal and illegal. According to Focus Ireland, 69% of homeless people report that their last stable home was in the private rental sector. It is sheer insanity in the midst of the greatest housing crisis in the history of this State to allow the flow of evictions from the private rental sector to continue without a serious attempt to stem the flow. This Bill represents a serious attempt to stem the flow.

The 2017 report also reveals that the most common type of eviction notice references sale of property as the grounds for eviction and that there has been an increase in the number of eviction notices reported to Threshold in 2017 which reference renovation of property as the grounds for eviction. Half of all eviction notices dealt with by Threshold in 2017 were evictions on the grounds of renovation or sale of property. If this Bill were passed it would prevent all of these evictions. During Leaders' Question today the Taoiseach said the Bill we are discussing tonight is too extreme.

However, a ban on the sale of property as grounds for eviction is not uncommon in continental Europe. It is legal in Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. I do not see landlords doing a runner out of Sweden or the Netherlands because a ban on evictions on the grounds of sale of property is the law of the land. There is a great deal of scaremongering on that issue. It is not these governments that are extreme on this issue but the Government of which the Minister is a part and which is presided over by the Taoiseach. It is extreme in allowing evictions to continue at this rate at a time of record homelessness.

Last night, I visited tenants at 539 North Circular Road. As explained by my colleague, Deputy Paul Murphy, on Leaders' Questions earlier, tenants in this 16-apartment building were issued with notices to quit at the end of October and face eviction at the beginning of January. The landlord, a Mr. James Anderson, has been a director or shareholder of no less than seven current or former companies with share capital of up to €1 million in one case.

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