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

This Friday, in the District Court beside the Four Courts, five households - families and individuals - will taste the very bitter fruits of this Government's failure to protect tenants from ruthless vulture funds and against no-fault evictions and to offer them alternatives when they are faced with homelessness, either in terms of social housing or private rental accommodation that they could afford and is within HAP limits. The families and individuals living in St. Helen's Court will face an application by a vulture fund, Mill Street Projects, to evict them into homelessness this Friday. These are decent, ordinary working people who have done absolutely nothing wrong. They have always paid their rent. They are still paying their rent. They have never been guilty of any anti-social behaviour. They had a community, one that has been wrecked. There used to be 20 tenants in it but others have been bullied out by two successive vulture funds. The tenants have been tortured by these vulture funds over four years and now face homelessness. This is because of the Government's refusal to ban no-fault evictions. There is no justification that should allow the law to facilitate a vulture fund, for no other reason than profit, to put people on the street but our law allows it.

There is absolutely no justification for the fact that in the same block there are 12 and now maybe 15 empty apartments beside the apartments from which these tenants are now to be evicted which the landlord claimed at the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, it wanted to rent but, strangely enough, it will not rent to the tenants it is about to evict. Those apartments have been allowed to sit there for two years. I have flagged this again and again. Why are compulsory purchase powers not used to get hold of these empty apartments that could not only prevent people going on the street but could house 12 to 15 other families? What alternatives are available to these tenants?

Under the HAP limits, the individuals in St. Helen's Court can seek a maximum rent of €990 for a one-bedroom apartment. In Dún Laoghaire today, the cheapest one-bedroom apartment is €1,300. The next one is €1,600 and the next one after than is €1,900. The maximum the families can look for is €1,900 for a three-bedroom apartment. The cheapest available in Dún Laoghaire at the moment is €2,400. All of these tenants are goosed and will be forced into homelessness because we have failed to protect not just these tenants but any other tenants faced with this situation.

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