Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of Sinn Féin, I welcome the Bill and the opportunity to discuss these very important topics. A number of the measures are similar to measures Sinn Féin and others have proposed, but unfortunately have not been passed over the past two and a half years.

I disagree with the Minister and Taoiseach, who have described the Bill as too radical. While this is no criticism of the authors of the Bill, in fact it contains nothing radical at all. These are eminently sensible and reasonable proposals in the main, many of which would have a very significant benefit, not just for the individual families they would protect, but also for the stability of our rental market.

I listened to the Minister talk about the risks of introducing the Bill. Those same arguments will be used against the Minister's Bill by sections of the landlord representative organisation, which in my view often very poorly represents landlords in arguing why we should not support Government legislation when it is published and we come to debate it early next year.

I concur with Deputy Barry's point that vacant possession notices to quit are the single biggest cause of family homelessness at present. The Residential Tenancies Board and Focus Ireland have confirmed that. Most of us do not understand why the Government has not taken some action to stop the flow of families into homelessness as a result of vacant possession notices to quit. The loss of landlords is not necessarily a problem, depending on what happens to the properties involved. The Minister is correct in saying that we have lost 9,000 properties from our rental stock in the last year and a half, the first time this has happened in over two decades. The Government presents its policies as stabilising the rental sector when, in fact, it is in free fall. This has nothing to with protections, either existing or proposed, for tenants but is because of the financial situation of many of the owners of rental properties. Large numbers of people bought second homes, incentivised by the Government at the height of the boom with buy-to-let mortgage tax breaks. Subsequently, they got into significant mortgage distress and now that the property market has turned, they are under enormous pressure from their lenders to voluntarily sell. Nothing in this Bill, if it is passed, will change that. Furthermore, nothing in the Minister's forthcoming Bill, which I hope to be in a position to support early next year, will change it either. We must accept that we have a much bigger problem in our rental market in terms of landlords and properties exiting the rental sector and take some action.

What is lacking in Rebuilding Ireland is a long-term strategy for the stabilisation and professionalisation of our rental market. I am a rental tenant. I choose to live in the rental sector but it is still a very precarious and uncertain place to be in the context of security of tenure, rent levels and so on. While many improvements have been made in recent years with the Residential Tenancies Act and the Residential Tenancies Board, we still have a long way to go. Sinn Féin strongly believes that we need a well regulated, professional private rental sector that meets the needs of tenants and gives people who provide accommodation a reasonable rate of return, with security and affordability at its heart. We must find a way to stop the flow of properties from the rental sector into primary residences, as is currently the case.

On the Bill itself, the provision to include receivers and financial institutions in the definition of landlord is eminently sensible. Despite the fact that the Minister cannot support this Bill now, I ask that he includes such a provision in his own legislation. This is something that should be done as a matter of urgency. A reduction of the probation period from six to two months is also eminently sensible. Most landlords will know what a tenant is like after a couple of months and there is no reason not to do this. Regarding tenancies of indefinite duration, Sinn Féin is already on record as having proposed and strongly advocated same. The abolition of sale as grounds for notice to quit has real merit although it would need to be teased out on Committee Stage in terms of its full application. It is certainly a worthwhile proposal.

There is one part of the Bill about which I am less sure. I am not against it and am open to discussing further the section relating to compensation for termination. If we had, for example, new tenancies of indefinite duration and for some reason people were seeking to exit those, a case could be made for compensation. Whether that would work now in the context of some of the current rental scenarios is unclear but I am more than open to being convinced of it on Committee Stage and would certainly not object to the Bill on that basis.

The Bill provides for a significant tightening of the definition of refurbishment which, again, is eminently sensible. I would fully support all of the provisions relating to extensions of the notice to quit period with the exception of the last. I am not saying that I am against the last one which refers to 365 but I would need to be convinced of that particular length. Certainly, it is something that should be discussed.

The key issue is that the Government is not taking enough action to tackle the issue of evictions and vacant possession notices to quit. Until the Minister comes up with better proposals, my party is more than happy to support the Bill put forward by People Before Profit and Solidarity tonight.

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