Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute on the debate on this welcome Bill - a piecemeal and belated Bill, as usual, but welcome, nonetheless. The Bill will extend the emergency period as set out in the Planning and Development, and Residential Tenancies, Act 2020 from July 2021 to January 2022 because, unsurprisingly, Covid-19 is still having a devastating impact on our economy and livelihoods. The Bill will finally make provisions for a maximum of two months’ rent to be requested as upfront payment, one month in advance and one month as deposit. The Bill also sets out provisions around student accommodation and notice periods.

Even though evictions were banned during Covid-19 when the 5 km restriction was in place, more still 1,100 households were still served with eviction notices over the past ten months. In an article in theIrish Examiner, by Aoife Moore, it is reported that the RTB has figures showing that 3,800 households were served with warning notices on rent arrears since last August and that 1,122 notices of termination of tenancy were issued.

Since 23 April, landlords have been legally allowed to evict people and of the 79 families presenting to the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive in April of this year, 14 were made homeless by the private rented sector. In May 2021, notices of termination were served on 170 households, with the intention of selling the property cited as the most common reason.

The written declaration for renters to access limited protection due to Covid-19 has only been accessed by 475 renters, despite nearly 4,000 renters being in financial difficulty. Why is this number so small? Do renters not know about this declaration and option? Has this information been provided in a variety of languages? How are renters being informed of this protection as it is vitally important to know that?

Apparently in the previous Dáil, one third of Deputies were landlords. This information was ascertained from the Register of Members’ Interests where some of us list our occupation as landlord. This Dáil, thankfully, saw a slight decrease from 33.5% to 25% of Deputies with investment properties. Therefore, one quarter of lawmakers also accumulate money from renting properties. How many of us then are paying mortgages? How many are living mortgage free? How many are renting and how many have helped wains out with deposits for homes? How many Deputies really know and understand the rental market from a tenant’s point of view? How many of us have experienced the insecurity and the fear of reporting breakages or problems in case one is hit with an eviction notice? These are real fears that tenants have.

During the Celtic tiger years, our housing market was described as a property bubble. It was a bubble that burst and left people in negative equity, homeless and, in some cases, taking their own lives. However, the bubble lives on. The property bubble is home to Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party, developers, real estate investment trusts: REITs, vulture funds, NAMA and Government policymakers. I refuse to believe that any of them are living in the real world. If they were, they would see how damaging our private rented sector is. The only reason there has been reducing numbers of families and individuals evicted into homelessness has been the emergency measures introduced as a result of Covid-19. The measures that we in opposition have been pleading for for years now, including a moratorium on rent increases and on evictions and longer notice periods, were all magically introduced in what were described as “unprecedented times”.

In the Nevin Economic Research Institute, NERI’s blog, Time to tackle the private rental sector, published in April 2020, Paul Goldrick-Kelly wrote that despite the protection measures introduced to protect renters during Covid-19:

Threshold reports a surge in calls from private renters since the onset of the pandemic who fear they will not have a place to stay and warns that we may see a surge of homelessness as the emergency measures expire. This is all the more likely given the disproportionate job losses among young and precarious workers, cohorts likely to have been forced into the private rental sector in the first place.

More than a year on from this report and the issues remain. We used to have a really high rate of homeownership in Ireland. In the 1990s and early 2000s, nearly four out of five households owned their homes but census 2016 showed that almost 500,0000 households were renting, an increase of 4.7 % on 2011, so for almost 30% of all occupied dwellings in the latest census, renting was the identified tenure status.

The NERI blog also stated:

Developments prior to the current Covid-19 crisis coincided with substantial growth in asking prices for houses. Between 2012 and 2019, the average price of a new home in Dublin nearly doubled to €380,400 from €200,000. Under Central Bank rules, household income would need to be €100,000 to qualify for a first-time mortgage for an average Dublin property. This would place homeownership out of reach of over 85% of Irish households.

We know that these prices have continued to increase alongside a Fine Gael narrative around “generation rent”. Threshold reported that, in 2018, fewer than one in three private tenants was renting by choice. The NERI blog speaks of “inhospitable conditions on the market” and that "96% of private renters recently surveyed said it was difficult or extremely difficult to find accommodation." Rents surpassed Celtic tiger levels. The blog continues:

The RTB rent index shows that adjusted national private rents in the third quarter of 2019 were 25% above pre-crash levels and 67% above 2012 lows. This rental inflation was particularly severe around Dublin, where adjusted rents were up by more than a third relative to the end of 200...

Insecurity in the private rental sector represented a leading contributor to homelessness. 58% of surveyed homeless families left their last stable home because of tenancy issues.

Other civil society organisations have also presented evidence over the past number of years regarding the high numbers being evicted into homelessness from the private rental market.

In February of this year, Michael Byrne, school of social policy, social work and social justice, UCD, published a paper entitled, The impact of COVID-19 on the private rental sector: emerging international evidence. The introduction states:

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged at a time in which the private rental sector (PRS) in many countries was already undergoing change and facing a variety of issues and challenges. PRS tenants are often most exposed to some of the major issues in housing systems, for example lack of affordability, insecurity, poor quality dwellings and overcrowding. In addition, PRS households typically disproportionately face challenges associated with precarious employment, and are often concentrated in the service sector and indeed in frontline sectors, such as healthcare. From the outset of the pandemic, many researchers highlighted the potential for these four sets of factors to interact in ways which were, and indeed are, extremely concerning with regard to PRS tenants. The four sets of factors are: the COVID-19 pandemic, housing insecurity, economic implications of public health measures, and labour market issues.

It is quite a depressing paper. The financialisation of housing globally has led to insecure housing situations in many countries. The four main issues affecting those in the private rental sector are listed in the paper as "lack of affordability, insecurity, poor quality dwellings and overcrowding". The fact that many workers in precarious industries are more likely to have been impacted by Covid-19 closures is highlighted in the paper. Michael Byrne also states, "The intersection of precarious employment and insecure housing is central to understanding the experience of renters during the pandemic, and likely shape their experience of its aftermath."

The paper usefully outlines some of the international policy responses to the pandemic:

The pandemic has seen widespread emergency measures introduced in relation to the PRS across many jurisdictions. Across many countries a similar suite of measures has been introduced in response to the pandemic. These measures can be categorised in three key policy areas: eviction bans; rent regulation; and financial support for tenants.

It is always useful to look outside of Ireland because sometimes the Government can try to paint a picture that it is going above and beyond with its protection measures.

My final comment relating to Michael Byrne’s paper concerns the idea of "double precarity" for households in the rental sector, namely labour market precarity and housing precarity. In Ireland, it is more likely to be vulnerable cohorts living in the private rental sector. For example, according to the paper:

...just under half of lone parent households are renting (compared to 36% of households made-up of a couple and children). Renters are also disproportionately non-Irish born. The proportion of non-Irish born households who are renting privately is 56% for EU-28 and 66% for non-EU 28 households. This is dramatically higher than the figure for Irish-born households, at just under 13%. Annual mean income of private renters is significantly below that of mortgaged homeowners. Similarly, almost a quarter of private renting households are at risk of poverty, while just 7% of homeowners are.

In the meantime, students are being asked to pay for between six and nine months' rent upfront, prospective tenants have reportedly been asked for three months’ rent in advance and, despite it being illegal, some landlords continue to discriminate against tenants in receipt of the housing assistance payment. The Government does nothing about that and the authorities do not either.

We cannot discuss the private rented sector and how dysfunctional it is without mentioning how lucrative it is for private equity investors and institutional investors. In quarter 4 of 2020, Savills Ireland reported deals worth €533 million. In 2020, a total of €3 billion was invested in Irish property, with €1.2 billion of that in the private rented sector. Article 43 of Bunreacht na hÉireann relates to private property. It states:

The State recognises ... that the exercise of the rights mentioned in the foregoing provisions of this Article ought, in civil society, to be regulated by the principles of social justice.

The State, accordingly, may as occasion requires delimit by law the exercise of the said rights with a view to reconciling their exercise with the exigencies of the common good.

Imagine a government using the Constitution for the good of the people, rather than continuing to misinterpret Article 43.

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