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

I move amendment No. 2:

In page 4, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following: “ “Act of 2020” means Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (Covid-19) Act 2020;”.

Before I speak directly to the amendments, I wish to say publicly that I raised with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, earlier today an issue relating to a person who is homeless and who it had been suggested might be put in shared homeless accommodation in spite of a chronic respiratory condition. I thank the Minister for responding immediately on that issue. That person, although he is still in what is obviously a very difficult situation, being homeless, has now been given his own-door emergency accommodation where he will not be vulnerable to infection due to not having been vaccinated. He and I are very appreciative that the Minister has responded so quickly. I thank him for that.

As I said on Second Stage, insofar as the Bill seeks to extend protections to a small cohort of tenants, People Before Profit will support it. Support that protects any group of tenants from eviction or rent increases is to be welcomed, as are the decisions to bring into legislation some of the calls that the Union of Students in Ireland and members of the Opposition brought forward previously.

However, the Minister will not be surprised to hear that we think it is not enough and that all tenants, tens of thousands of them, are in a very precarious situation and need urgent protection. In our view, the Bill should include much more serious, effective and comprehensive measures to protect tenants from eviction and rent increases they simply cannot afford when one considers that the vast majority of tenants are already paying absolutely obscene levels of rent.

As I mentioned earlier today, the minimum rent for a two-bedroom apartment in my area is €2,000. Very often it is more than €2,000, such as €2,500 or €3,000. Who can afford that? In order to pay the rent for a two-bedroom apartment, one needs to earn €24,000 a year after tax. It is beyond belief. It is thoroughly obscene. On top of that, because of the blanket restriction on further rent increases that the Minister rightly introduced during the pandemic but which has now been lifted, we face a situation where the two rolled-up 4% increases over two years can mean that people are facing 8% rent increases on top of those kinds of rents. It is utterly unacceptable.

It is equally unacceptable that tenants could be faced with eviction when there is no fault involved. Good tenants who pay their rent, have not done anything wrong and are not engaged in anti-social behaviour could be evicted. I want to stress that at the moment, if you are evicted, you are, in effect, in a homelessness crisis. That is certainly the case where I live, as it is in most of Dublin. Most people would say it is also the case in Cork, Galway, Waterford and many of the other epicentres of the housing crisis, such is the level of unaffordability and the extortionate rip-off rents being charged by vulture funds, corporate landlords or just landlords who think they can make a lot of money.That is not acceptable. If there was a big supply of affordable rental accommodation, one might say maybe it is okay that people can be evicted, but in a situation where there is nothing out there that is affordable and 100,000 families are, in one way or another, on social housing lists, transfer lists or a HAP transfer list with no chance of getting a property, there is nothing there for them. Almost as a matter of definition, if one is evicted, one is very likely in a homelessness crisis.

I have previously mentioned the St. Helen's Court residents to the Minister. I hope he might intervene in the effective way he did today in terms of their plight. They are in a dire situation. These are elderly people, working people who pay their rent and so on. This community is facing the prospect of being in emergency accommodation in the coming weeks because the protections they enjoyed during the pandemic have no been lifted and this Bill does not provide them.

The amendments in this grouping are an attempt to address that issue and to bring into the Bill protections for all tenants for the duration of the emergency period at a minimum so that they evolve. These are amendments to the emergency legislation. They provide that for the emergency period, that is, for as long as the pandemic is with us, there should be absolutely no question of anybody being evicted and, similarly, there should be no question of people having further rent increases imposed on them. In addition, when the period ends there should be no question of rent increases being backdated or accumulating such that people face an 8% or potentially a 12% rent increase.Even those who are protected by the Bill could find themselves getting a 12% increase. There should be no backdating of those increases. That is what these amendments do.

By the way, that is only as a stopgap. We need not just pandemic-related protections for all tenants, but fundamental reform in the legislation to protect tenants properly. Nobody who pays their rent and is a good tenant should face eviction. If landlords are selling, they should be required to do so with tenants in situ. As regards the stopgap, if the Minister accepts these amendments, which I know he will not do, he should then bring in legislation that will give that protection to tenants and, similarly, bring in rent controls. I do not see what other way it can be done because I do not believe for one minute that rents are going to come down even if the supply to which the Minister often refers increases and so on. There is no real prospect of the current unaffordable rents coming down. We need rent controls, as are standard in many countries. Even in the heart of capitalism, in New York and places like that, the authorities set rents at affordable levels and that is what should happen here. People from a rent board or the local authority should go in, look at a property and say a particular figure is as much as can be charged for that property. That is what we actually need to protect tenants.

I do not know whether the current by-election might spur the Minister on a bit. It certainly spurred the Tánaiste into making some fairly remarkable promises. It might be worth the Government bearing in mind while considering these amendments that there is a significant number of renters in Dublin Bay South. Many of the people to whom I have spoken on the doorsteps have asked what will be done for tenants and renters. I think the Minister should take this opportunity. If it protects tenants, I do not care that it might get a few votes for Fianna Fáil.

This is the time when we have to protect tenants from unjust evictions and the extortionate rents they are now facing. At the very least, the Minister could accept these amendments which would mean that for the full duration of the emergency period, that is, until the emergency legislation is repealed, there will be no rent increases and no evictions. A lot of people would benefit from that, including the tenants in my area whom I have mentioned and who are now facing the imminent threat of eviction and homelessness when they have done absolutely nothing wrong. I appeal to the Minister to seriously consider these amendments.

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