Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

All three of these cases demonstrate that the Minister's legislation is riddled with loopholes for unscrupulous vulture funds, which lack any compassion or humanity. The Minister's laws make assumptions about landlords - and I am sure there are many individual landlords out there who care about their tenants and have a scintilla of compassion or humanity - but these three cases demonstrate that there are vulture funds that do not want to be landlords, do not give a damn about tenants and do not care about making people homeless. They just see the property as an asset they can sweat and the best way to sweat it is to evict people, exploiting loopholes, particularly the loophole around substantial refurbishment, the loopholes around sale or, in the case of Dún Laoghaire where there are 11 tenants, they will move to evict eight and will try to evict the other three a little bit further down the line because of the Tyrrelstown amendment. We need a ban on evictions on the grounds of sale. We need a tightening up of the issue of refurbishment so that it cannot be used to justify evictions and we need the passing of the anti-evictions Bill 2018, which was passed by the majority of this Dáil but which the Minister is blocking, which would prevent many of these evictions.

Does the Minister recognise there is a problem? Will he address it in order to help these people avoid homelessness?

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