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

Over the past three years, I have repeatedly raised the plight of tenants in the St. Helen's Court apartment complex in Dún Laoghaire. They have faced four attempts by two different vulture funds that bought the complex to evict them using loopholes in the Residential Tenancies Acts. They tried to increase the rent by 60% at one point, they then used substantial refurbishments as grounds for eviction and are now using sale of the property for that purpose. They failed to evict ten tenants and are now trying to evict eight instead to circumvent the Tyrrelstown amendment. This is the shocking, cold and ruthless logic of a profit-seeking vulture fund. I was in the offices of the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, with the tenants on Monday. Some of them are in there today. There is a similar case in Rathmines, an area with three Government Deputies, in which a number of tenants were successfully evicted by vulture funds after fighting this eviction for a year.

Why does the Government not close these loopholes and legislate to prevent this kind of vicious and ruthless profit-seeking logic at the expense of tenants, all of whom pay their rent? These are working people who will now face eviction in the teeth of Christmas and in the middle of a pandemic. Does the Taoiseach not think that is obscene behaviour which the Government has a responsibility to prevent to ensure that decent ordinary people who pay their rent are not dumped out on the street by vulture funds?

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