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

With the discretion of the Chair, I will speak to it amendment No. 13 and I will move it when we reach the section.

The purpose of my amendment No. 10 is to deal with the issue we spoke about a moment ago, the 8% increase. The 8% or 12% increase was not an accident or the result of a loophole. The Minister will remember that back in 2016, in the dying hours of that Dáil term, there was a late night suspension of the consideration of the rent pressure zone legislation because of the complexity of the mathematical formula. Given that it was produced by officials, probably under significant time pressure from the then Minister, it contained some errors and we had to take a break during the session. The poor officials had to work late into the night and we met again at 8 o’clock the next morning to try to resolve the issue. Even at that stage, it was clear that the way in which the mathematical formula for working out the rent increase was drafted would allow a landlord, if he or she did not increase the rent by 4% in a given year, to roll that increase over to the following years or subsequently. The reason this has become such a big issue now is that very few landlords availed of the facility as they took the 4% rent increase each year. However, because many landlords either could not increase rents last year and others did the decent thing and opted not to increase them, it has become a bigger issue.

I will withdraw amendment No. 10 on the basis of what the Minister said earlier. If he comes to the House with a resolution of this matter, he will find willing partners on this side of the House. The sooner we deal with the matter, the better. I appreciate the sensitivities and that the Minister is not able to go further. This cannot wait until the autumn and I take it that is also what the Minister is saying.

With respect to amendment No. 12, which I will not press either, the purpose was to allow us to air a very important issue and I hope the Minister will respond to it in detail. This relates to the optional opt-in for tenants, including students, to pay more than a month’s rent and a month’s rent deposit in advance. I said earlier that I understood the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science had a particular concern not in respect of students who are living in Ireland but students who come from abroad specifically for full terms and buy a package of education materials and accommodation from the university. Those students needed to be catered for in a different way. I fully accept that and there is no difficulty with it.

I have a real concern, however. If, as I understand it, the Minister intends to come back in the autumn with a resolution of this matter that narrows those exceptional grounds to only that category of students, it will leave a period between now and then where some students or indeed some tenants may be pressurised into paying more than one month’s rent and one month’s rent deposit in advance on an informal basis. I urge the Minister to work with the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, and Threshold from the time of the passing of this Bill to ensure there is a public awareness campaign on this issue. I am sure Threshold and USI would be very keen to participate in that to make students aware of what their entitlements are so that if any student or tenant is being pressurised, or feels in any way pressurised, to pay more than what this legislation requires, he or she can raise that issue formally.

As the Minister is aware, I raised a concern earlier that complaints cannot be made until the tenancy commences. That is another problem we need to deal with.

In respect of amendment No. 13, I do not want to have a row with the Minister on the broader point of the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act because I accept we are not going to agree on it. What I want him to hear from this side of the House is that, notwithstanding the fact that the Minister cannot or will not move towards a blanket ban on evictions and notices to quit during the Covid-19 pandemic period, he should at least accept that there are certain categories of tenants not covered by the provisions of the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act who should be considered as vulnerable in the same way. For example, a significant number of tenants from many parts of the country who have contacted me over the past ten months are not on a pandemic payment but have lost a portion of their income. To remain in their job they have reached a voluntary agreement with an employer, for example, to reduce their pay by 10% or 20%. These people are significantly income constrained. Their landlord may have increased the rent last year or this year and that is putting them under real pressure. They are doing either far too much to try to meet the rental payments or beginning to fall into rent arrears. However, they do not fit under the restrictive criteria of the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Act.

I also know of tenants who have not lost income but are on very modest incomes and have experienced significant rent increases, particularly outside of rent pressure zones - the Minister knows the figures as well as I do - and who are under very significant pressure. The consequences of them falling into rent arrears and getting a notice to quit could be not only the loss of their current property but presentation into homelessness with all of the risks that contains.

In respect of the homeless figures, again we only have the April figures to date but, as Deputy Cian O’Callaghan correctly pointed out, there has been a month-on-month increase in the overall figures and that is driven by family homelessness. We obviously have to wait until we have the May and June figures to see if there is a trend.

My big worry, and I am saying this to the Minister with all sincerity, is that the 3,800 rent warning notices and 1,122 notices to quit issued from August 2020 to May 2021 are now in the system. As of 22 April, when the ban on evictions that applied under the 5 km level 5 restriction was lifted, these notices will now work their way through the system. The Minister will know that on this issue I have never used some of the phrases that others have used. I am genuinely concerned, however, that we could see, month on month, a slow, steady increase in homelessness presentations as those notices to quit begin expiring, in particular by families. What we also know from the RTB data recently released to me is that almost 80% of those notices to quit are for sale of property or use by a family member as opposed to rent arrears. Whether those are the actual reasons, we do not know.

There are groups of people who need some protection. I urge the Minister to ensure that people who are vulnerable today and do not get the protections available to the 475 individuals who have submitted written declarations do not get lost in the system. We need to ensure they are also protected.

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