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

I wish to speak to amendment No. 22. Section 5 contains a real deceit. I am choosing my words very carefully. For several weeks, the Minister has been on the airwaves telling people that this legislation will introduce tenancies of unlimited duration. The Minister of State used the same phrase on Second Stage last week. A tenancy of "unlimited" or "indefinite" duration has a clear meaning. It means that if I sign a contract as a tenant and then abide by its terms to pay my rent, keep the property in good order and not engage in antisocial behaviour, I can stay in that tenancy for an indefinite or unlimited period. It is a commonly understood principle almost everywhere in the world. Nowhere in this Bill is there the creation of tenancies of indefinite or unlimited duration. That is a matter of fact, so for any politician to come to the House and claim otherwise is to knowingly or unknowingly mislead the House.

What is being proposed in this section of the Bill is a small technical change and I have no objection to it. It does away with the ability of a landlord to terminate a tenancy with no grounds at the end of a Part 4 tenancy. This is something that most of us who know the legislation would welcome. However, the most recent data I have from the RTB, which I received last week, make it clear that, of all the notices to quit issued since the end of 2019, only 3% were on section 34(b) grounds, that is, a notice to quit at the end of a Part 4 tenancy. In the past year, that figure has only been 1.9%. Of the other grounds given for notice to quit in recent years, the most common is sale of property at 53% with use of the property by the landlord or a landlord's family member at 24%. We can debate whether these are good or bad things, but so long as these two core parts of section 34 of the Residential Tenancies Act remain on the Statute Book, then tenancies of indefinite or unlimited duration will not exist after the passing of this Bill. It would have been better had the Government been upfront with people and said that this was a small technical change that should have been made a long time ago, would not make much difference and would only protect a tiny number of people but let us do it anyway. We would have said, "Fair play, we will not get in the way".

The Government's claim is not an invention of this Government, as the previous Minister, former Deputy Eoghan Murphy, did the same and was on record as promising to introduce this legislation in the final year of his Ministry. In repeatedly making it, however, the Government has raised the expectation among renters that, if the Bill passes, a tenancy of indefinite duration will exist. It cannot exist unless the Government accepts the amendment that I have tabled, which would remove the other two no-fault eviction grounds from section 34, those being sale of property and use of the property by the landlord or the landlord's family member.

Obviously, these two changes would not apply to current tenancies because those tenancies are governed under existing contracts and current tenancy law, but if we are serious about moving towards a long-term, stable and professionalised private rental sector, which is something that we do not currently have but on which both sides of the House agree, we must move to a situation where a rental property is a rental property and remains so instead of being flipped in and out of rental and owner occupation. In the commercial sector and as with the Minister of State's constituency office and mine, once we sign the lease, if the owner of the property wants to sell, he or she sells for good, bad or indifferent with us in situ.

So it should be ultimately the case in the private rental sector. Therefore, first, I would like the Minister to stand up and at least admit this Bill does not introduce tenancies of indefinite duration, because it does not and, second, to accept that if we want to have tenancies of indefinite duration we must do two things that the Government has implacably opposed doing, which is removing those other grounds from section 34 of the Residential Tenancies Act, that is, allowing a landlord to issue a notice to quit on the grounds of sale or use by a landlord or a landlord's family member. It is the only way for us to move into a much more stable and civilised private rental sector and if it is not done now it will have to be done at some point in the future. On that basis, I will press amendment No. 22.

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