Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

In theory, everybody would welcome the extension of a ban on evictions until July. However, the ban provided for in this Bill is not the same as what was previously in place. We in the Labour Party have always said that we will work constructively with the Government to do whatever we can to solve this crisis, keep people in their homes and allow them to have hope that they have a future in Ireland. However, the stop-start nature of the eviction ban and the periodic need to produce new legislation to cover another few months is becoming intolerable. The Minister mentioned that this is the fourth Bill to extend the ban on evictions. Nobody here thinks that we will wake up on 31 July and Covid will be gone. Even if everybody in the world was vaccinated by that date and Covid had disappeared, the impact of this pandemic will last far longer than any perceived ending or winding down of the virus.

The protections that are required need to look beyond 31 July towards a longer-term view. The time for these periodic legislative provisions is well and truly up. My fellow members of the Business Committee and I see with increasing regularity that it is the time of year when the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is asking us to waive pre-legislative scrutiny on another residential tenancies Bill, and away we go again for another quarter. We cannot continue like this. It is dawning on people everywhere, including in this country, that the impact of this virus is going to last a long time. Our legislation needs to be robust enough and take a sufficiently long view to account, as best as possible, for that reality.

The protection of renters and the banning of evictions are key to that. They are key to tackling the homelessness crisis and everything we have been experiencing for the past ten years. The past five years have been particularly vicious, with people presenting at local authority homeless counters and having to go into emergency accommodation, which is generally provided in congregated settings. We know that the virus lives, breeds and is most comfortable in such settings. The eviction ban, when it worked at the beginning of the pandemic, was a good thing. However, what is proposed in this Bill is not that. The original protections are being diminished and stripped away and we cannot stand over that.

The Bill seeks to remove the blanket moratorium on evictions of renters in arrears. Prior to the pandemic, it was estimated that one in ten rental households had missed a rental payment due to financial difficulties. We are in no doubt that this number has increased almost exponentially due to the impact of the Covid crisis. The Government is now leaving he door open for anyone in private residential tenancies to lose the roof over his or her head. The Minister has said that the measures introduced in the Planning and Development, and Residential Tenancies, Act 2020 that encourage tenants to obtain services and advice from the Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, and make arrangements with landlords have been a success. They have not been a success. He should talk to Threshold or any of the stakeholders and they will tell him that. The take-up has been very low and the legislation has not provided any real solution for renters who are in arrears. What has provided solutions and helped to protect people from losing their homes is an eviction ban.

This Bill is being brought forward at the same time as the Minister for Finance is flagging, very clearly and unsubtly, that changes to the pandemic unemployment payment are coming down the line. That payment will be reviewed again in June. For renters in financial difficulty who hear certain language from Government and see kites being flown about the PUP being restructured and that we are living beyond our means, mid-summer will be a time of huge anxiety and worry. People are concerned that they are going to lose their homes and this Bill does not give them any comfort.

I again ask the Minister to talk to the stakeholders, including Threshold. An example it gave of a tenant in difficulty is a man who has been renting his home for five years. He works full time and never had a problem paying his rent until the landlord increased it by 50% even though the tenancy is located within a rent pressure zone, RPZ. The tenant did not know about the RPZ rules and agreed to pay the increase. Understandably, he began to accrue rent arrears and he was subsequently issued with a notice of termination. This tenant is now disputing the unlawful rent increase and the notice of termination but he is not going to be protected under this legislation in seeing that process through. Another man was working part time and living in his rental home less than a year when the agent claimed he had arrears. He knew he was short on the rent one month but he has been told he was short on three occasions, which is not the case. If this Bill goes through, that man will not be protected. These are just two examples of God knows how many people who are not being captured by the system at the moment. This legislation, as it is currently constructed, is very worrying from the perspective of protecting such people.

Linking the ban on evictions to the 5 km restriction was a clear error by the Government. It was given an opportunity to remedy it before Christmas by way of the Minister extending, by order, the applicability of the ban in circumstances of reduced restrictions, having regard to the current public health guidelines. We will be making the same proposal in our amendments tomorrow and we hope the Minister will accept them this time. The ban on evictions and rent increases introduced by the Government less than a year ago helped people and gave them certainty in a very uncertain time. That certainty is being eroded and stripped back. The Bill before us today does not provide certainty at a time when people are at their most crestfallen and low. They do not know when this period of crisis is going to end.

There are problems in respect of jobs and job security as well. They now have the uncertainty of not having a roof over their heads to compound all of that at a time when we should be looking to a brighter future.

The Minister does have a significant opportunity here to accept amendments tomorrow and to take a longer term view of banning evictions. He could use Covid-19 as an excuse. Rather than waste a crisis, he could use it as a reason to keep people in their homes and build the houses he wants to build and has committed to building, including social and affordable housing and everything else he has said. We can keep people in their homes more by doing that. It is about bringing the supply in so that we do not have people turning up at the Fingal County Council homeless desk in Blanchardstown or the homeless desk in other local authorities. It is to reduce the number of people turning up at the centres of the Peter McVerry Trust, Focus Ireland or the Simon Community or ringing the Threshold lines. All of these things will continue to happen. There is an opportunity for the Minister to back up his aspirations on the supply side. I appeal to the Minister to consider that.

I wish to comment on a not-unrelated element of this. I have been contacted by several estate agents in recent weeks to discuss what is going on in the housing market. The problem is impacting younger buyers and those buying their first homes in particular. This element of the market is going 10% or 15% above any of the trends in other parts of the market because people are going up against institutional investors. It is especially tough for them since they are unable to view the houses because of the restrictions. That is understandable in a way. However, it is having this impact on the people who can least afford it. They are being pressured by all this uncertainty into paying inflated prices. We all know there is a correlation, and when house prices are inflated, especially at the end of the market made up of first-time buyers buying one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments or two-bedroom or three-bedroom homes, that ultimately has an impact on rental prices as well. That is happening now. I wonder whether the Minister is getting the same representations. These estate agents are not happy about this. They say these people are being pressured and forced into bad decisions. They are going up against institutional investors and they do not have a hope of matching those investors. It is an unfair playing field.

This is all linked, as the Minister knows. The Minister should use this as an opportunity to get more things right than wrong about housing. Unfortunately, this Bill is balanced on the wrong side. It can be improved with the amendments being offered by the Opposition. I hope the Minister will look at them overnight and accept them tomorrow.

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