Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Laoghaire for bringing this Bill before the House and I welcome the response from the Government in not opposing it and giving an assurance that we will see some action on this issue. As it stands, the enforcement of evictions and court orders is not covered under the Private Security Services Act 2004 and, therefore, do not fall under the remit of the PSA. Evictions and court orders can be carried out by anyone once a court order is issued. No licence is needed, force is permitted if it is deemed to be required and there is a complete absence of oversight and accountability. That is not good enough. It is not a hypothetical situation; it is a real situation and it is not a recent revelation.

There have been some high-profile evictions. I refer to the one in Roscommon, with the eviction of a family from their home near Strokestown in December 2018. The eviction was ordered by the High Court because of an unpaid debt to KBC Bank. KBC hired GS Agencies Limited to enforce the eviction. GS Agencies Limited is run by a debt collector who is an ex-British soldier, who served with the Royal Irish Regiment, RIR, and the Ulster Defence Regiment, UDR. He contacted former colleagues a month prior to the eviction, requesting them to travel to Roscommon and to name their price. Much of this was in the media, but it is important to say it here. The aftermath of the eviction turned violent, with several people injured, vehicles burned and a dog killed. A former colleague of the agency owner said that he seemed to get the jobs that no other security firm wanted. There is further subcontracting to get people to do the dirty work. When good security staff will not take up the job, where will the company turn? This was the kind of stuff to which reference was made.

The security firm was found guilty of six breaches of the Private Security Services Act 2004 due to its occupation of the house after the eviction, but the personnel involved could not be charged for their actions during the eviction. It was reported in the media that a Garda superintendent ordered both entrances to the house to be closed off during the eviction. There was also a Garda presence outside the boundaries of the property to observe the eviction taking place. That does not reflect well on the Garda. As has already been said, many gardaí do not want to be placed in this kind of situation.

Housing activists in 34 North Frederick Street were removed from a vacant building which they had occupied in defiance of a court order as part of the Take Back The City campaign in 2018. The 15 or 20 men who removed the activists wore balaclavas, refused to show identification and arrived in a van with no registration on the front and UK number plates on the back. The men were from a private security firm hired by the landlord to enforce the eviction. The Garda public order unit had a substantial presence on the scene and its members wore face coverings. The activist group said that physical force was used against several attendees and five activists were arrested. This was a heavy-handed and confrontational response to a peaceful protest which sought to highlight the extent of the housing crisis. The conduct of the gardaí drew criticism from the Opposition, Amnesty International and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL.

On 12 August 2020, tenants were evicted from a property on Berkeley Road in Phibsborough. The tenants had not received a legal eviction notice, but had received a message via Facebook. That is not that unusual in respect of the kinds of eviction notices people get. There is a presumption that such messages are sufficient, but strict protocol surrounds eviction notices and I am surprised how often I have seen those kinds of eviction notices issued, particularly to renters. In this case in Phibsborough, men from a private security firm, wearing masks, hats, scarfs and dark glasses, evicted the tenants and boarded up the property. Gardaí were called to the property by the tenants, who had called 999 to request assistance. Gardaí did not intervene as the tenants were physically removed from their home, according to video footage.

The footage also shows the gardaí telling the tenants that they had no right to be there any more and that it was not the Garda's responsibility if the tenants were homeless. That may well be true, but it is not how gardaí should be represented in this kind of situation.

It draws them in in a way that I believe is not conducive to governing by consent. The eviction was deemed invalid and the tenants returned to the property. Severe property damage was done to the home by the private security firm, personal belongings were destroyed, toilets were smashed, the electricity was switched off and doors were pulled from their hinges. The Policing Authority has questioned the "appropriateness of the Garda presence and of some of the things that appeared to have been said, and about the fact that circumstances were allowed to develop where the impression was conveyed that the Garda Síochána had an active role in the event". The ICCL has said an Garda Síochána should not be playing a supporting role in private evictions unless it is a necessary and proportionate response to actual or threatened criminal behaviour.

The latest figures available from the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, indicate that 372 eviction notices were served between March and June 2020, with 131 of these being notified to the RTB between April and June 2020 despite the Government's introduction of an eviction ban and a rent freeze in late March. The RTB reports an average of six to seven calls per week related to unlawful termination of tenancies since March. They are the ones that are notified to the RTB. Many Members are also aware of individual cases. Threshold has also noticed a worrying increase in the overall cases of illegal evictions in comparison with last year. Since March, 44 tenants had contacted Threshold after being illegally evicted from their housing, of whom 17 ended up in homeless accommodation or sleeping in their cars. Once the moratorium on evictions came to an end in August this year, the number of tenants requiring Threshold's assistance with notice of terminations had increased and went back almost to 2019 levels. This really indicates the importance of seeing the need for a response way beyond the lockdown and well into next year as a minimum of what needs to be done.

In the recent Threshold renter's survey, one third reported a reduction in income due to Covid restrictions, and a large number of renters feel less secure in their rental homes since the beginning of the pandemic. One fifth of those surveyed said they are paying more than 50% of their net income on rent, with 57% paying more than 30% of their net income. The private rental sector offers a hugely insecure option in terms of housing and rent, where very often people do not have any other options. I spoke recently to a pensioner who has fairly serious issues with compromised health. She told me that she is more scared of being evicted from her home than catching Covid. That says an awful lot.

Higher standards are needed from private security firms and the Garda in the enforcement of court orders and evictions. We need to ensure that security services hired to enforce legal orders act humanely, professionally, and are held to account for their actions if they deviate from that. By bringing these private security firms under the remit of the Act, anyone who is involved in enforcing court orders would be subject to high standards, oversight, licensing, complaints procedures and would be required to carry identification. I believe this is a bare minimum of what is needed. There are a whole lot of other issues around the insecurity of the whole rental sector and the threat of eviction for people who have mortgage arrears.

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