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

Every single day that I walk into my constituency office in Dún Laoghaire, staring me straight in the face, right across the road is living proof of the failure of the Government and successive Governments to deal with the ruthless, vicious landlords to whom Deputy O'Dowd just referred, and to protect tenants from what they are allowed to do under law by successive Governments. That is the multi-unit apartment complex that I have talked about here for four years, namely, St. Helen's Court. It stares me in the face, and I meet the people in there every day. When I look at it, it ticks every box of the failures of the Government to protect tenants and to deal with these types of landlords. Successive attempts by the vulture fund owners to drive people out were based on various grounds, but they have finally legally succeeded in doing what they sought to do at the beginning of the pandemic. The pandemic emergency measures saved the tenants for a while, but they are now legally evicted since the spring of this year. They are overholding because they have nowhere to go, but they are being evicted on grounds of sale by a vulture fund. A vulture fund does not need the property for itself. There is no justification at all for this fund to put these people out. They are decent, ordinary working people, some with families, some pensioners, some with serious health issues, people who have been working all their lives and they are just out. They have nowhere to go. There used to be 20 tenants in there, now two thirds of them have gone out of fear, anxiety and stress because there were successive attempts to evict them on grounds of sale or refurbishment or in one case it was not quite decided whether it would be for sale or refurbishment, but they were going to get the person out anyway. It was a case of just any excuse to get people out so they could maximise the value of the property. Two thirds of the property is empty for the past two years and it has been allowed to just sit there when there is a massive housing crisis in the area. Families are being made homeless week in and week out. They are trying to drive the remaining tenants out, but the perfectly good units where they have succeeded in getting the tenants out have been left empty for two years.

It is obscene. It is the definition of obscenity, greed and ruthlessness. I am sure this goes on in many other places across the city and the country. Time and time again I have come in here and challenged housing Ministers on what they are going to do about situations like this. What are they going to do to stop this obscenity, this gross injustice, this horrendous unjustifiable action that is being done purely for greed, for money? The answer is nothing. Nothing at all. There is nothing in this Bill that will do it for them either. I honestly do not understand it, except that the Minister thinks it is okay for these people who are driven solely by the desire to make money to do this to human beings. He allows it to happen. He makes excuses and justifies why he does nothing about it. We just keep going around in circles. The spin will continue and the pretence that we care, but nothing will be done.

Once again, the Opposition has put forward amendments to try to prevent this from happening and the Government will find excuses for why it is okay to do it.

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