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

I will speak to all of my amendments in this grouping in one go to save time. I used the word "Orwellian" yesterday during Second Stage debate for elements of the Minister's speech and he has outdone himself in the Orwellian nature of his responses. Crucially, he has ignored key concerns that many Opposition Members have expressed and that Threshold and the Simon Communities of Ireland have raised directly with all Deputies, the Minister included.

The function of pre-legislative scrutiny is not for Deputies to have a debate, contrary to what a Fianna Fáil backbencher said earlier. It is usually for us to bring in expert opinion to tease through whether the legislation in front of us does what the Minister claims it is intended to do. That opportunity was denied in this instance. That is particularly relevant for section 2. While all of us have said from the outset that no protection should be given to any tenant who has the ability to pay rent and wilfully refuses to do so, we are concerned that the intention of that section is to remove protections from a much wider group of people. We discussed some of those real-life scenarios earlier today. Because we were denied the opportunity to have that pre-legislative scrutiny, the public did not get to hear the full detail of that scrutiny. If the Minister had just brought forward a Bill that included section 1, we would have sailed through it yesterday and today. We would have asked for it to be extended as the amendments in this grouping propose but we would not have any difficulties with it. The Minister is not correct to say the Bill before us is simply a restatement of previous Bills because section 2 is a profound change. Nobody here has any data to show the extent of the impact of it.

The Minister's representation of the Opposition and our opposition to the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act last year is also Orwellian. We opposed that Act because it stripped the overwhelming majority of hard-working, hard-pressed renters of the protections the Oireachtas had unanimously agreed at the start of the pandemic. It only provided protections for those who have experienced income loss because of Covid-19 and are on a Covid-related payment. If the Minister had brought forward a Bill to provide greater protection, of course we would have supported that. It was because his projections were so narrow that we could not, and rightfully would not, do that.

The Minister is also disingenuous in quoting figures from the RTB. I have the most up-to-date figures, which are more accurate than his. The problem is that since the narrow protections for tenant in arrears due to Covid-19 income loss and on a Covid-19 payment have been introduced, 2,401 warning notices have been issued by landlords to tenants, while only 407 tenants sought protection. That means there are almost 2,000 tenants out there, that we know of, who had warning letters. There were 700 notices to quit but we do not know the difference between the 700 and the 2,000. We do not know if, for example, those people were pressurised into paying more when they could not or if they voluntarily vacated the properties without taking a case because the Minister and the RTB cannot tell us that. Of the people who between August and February received warning letters from their landlord, only a small portion availed of the protection. That is because it is cumbersome, difficult for them to access and it completely misunderstands the disproportionate power relationship between landlords and tenants, which means that even tenants who might not be classified as vulnerable are nervous of taking cases to the RTB for fear of consequences from the landlord.

On the section under discussion, it makes no sense to only extend the protection for that small group of renters for three months. Nobody believes these renters will be back in work or will have fully dealt with their arrears by July. Therefore, rather than having to rush legislation through again and possibly attach further onerous revisions to tenancy protections, why not extend it now? Whether it is to the October date proposed by the Social Democrats, the December date proposed by me or a date next year, why not give more breathing time as is required?

We may not get the time to discuss this later so I will say now that I think it is absolutely wrong of some Deputies to conflate the wilful non-payment of rent with significant numbers of tenants in rent arrears today through no fault of their own and who will be at risk of notices to quit and homelessness if section 2 passes. The Minister repeatedly refuses to deal with the health impacts of forcing those tenants to look for alternative accommodation even if level 5 restrictions are lifted, but especially if they are not. Some of those tenants could fall into homelessness. There are direct health consequences in the context of a deadly pandemic of allowing that to happen. That is why those groups of people should be protected. If we had pre-legislative scrutiny of all of this, that could have been teased out.

For the Minister and his party colleagues to claim that he is the champion of tenant rights when Bill after Bill progressively strips more of those tenants' rights from them is not credible. Likewise, where he continues to give those small groups of tenants some protections, he makes it more difficult and cumbersome and only extends such protections for several months, increasing their anxiety. That suggests the Minister has no real understanding of the difficulty those renters are in.

Unless the Minister accepts our amendments, particularly the deletion of section 2, anybody on the side of renters has no choice but to oppose this legislation.

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