Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am grateful to the Acting Chair and all Deputies for facilitating debate on this urgent legislation in Dáil Éireann this week. I also wish to record my thanks to the members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage for providing the necessary waiver of pre-legislative scrutiny and to the Chief Whip for enabling the Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) Bill 2022 to be debated on Second Stage today.

I am asking the House to pass the Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) Bill 2022 today to enable its early enactment to make emergency provision to defer the termination dates of certain residential tenancies that fall, or would fall, during the period beginning on the day after the date of the enactment of this Bill and ending on 31 March 2023 to mitigate the risk that persons whose tenancies would otherwise be terminated during that period would be unable to obtain alternative accommodation, and to provide for phased arrangements to enable tenancies affected to be terminated over the period from 1 April to 18 June 2023 to assist in managing demands on housing services as a result of such deferred termination.

The number of people entering homeless emergency accommodation has been increasing since the start of this year. There have also been increases in notices of termination from private rental accommodation during this period. My Department and local authorities have taken a number of steps to deal with the situation. Given the extraordinary situation and ongoing increases in the numbers of people accessing emergency accommodation, however, additional emergency measures are now required. This Bill provides for deferment of certain tenancy terminations taking effect over the coming winter emergency period due to the ongoing, acute supply constraints in the residential rental sector and the expected increase in homelessness presentations over the coming period. The Bill seeks to reduce the burden on homelessness services and the pressure on tenants during the winter months.

The Government recognises that although a landlord’s constitutionally protected property right to terminate a tenancy will be constrained by this Bill, it is necessary to take this step to achieve an urgent social objective of preventing tenants being made homeless or having to source alternative accommodation in an extremely constrained market during the coming winter months. To ensure the response is proportionate, the measures in this Bill are limited to the winter of 2022-2023, they will impact only in respect of certain tenancies, and they are calibrated to apply as fairly as possible.

In proposing the termination pause, the Government is balancing the competing priorities of preventing people falling into homelessness and recognising the need to stem fairly the continued exit of small-scale landlords from the private rental sector. The Government is conscious of the need to ensure small-scale landlords remain in the private rental market. With this in mind, the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, has commissioned a comprehensive review of the sector after significant regulatory changes over recent years and the Department will act on its recommendations as soon as practical. Our housing system needs a safe, secure framework for both landlords and tenants.

I am also conscious that, if passed, this Bill provides a window of time for my Department, local authorities, approved housing bodies and NGOs to progress delivery under Housing for All to remove the need for this emergency legislation. The Government is taking significant steps to address the supply constraints in the housing market and to deliver homes for rent and purchase, including social, affordable and cost rental housing. However, there are a number of factors, including the increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness, increased demand for accommodation resulting from the Ukrainian crisis and significant inward migration, which are combining to create significant difficulties in the provision of emergency accommodation, particularly over the coming months. This is placing additional pressure on homelessness services as we enter the winter period when capacity constraints are extremely tight for emergency accommodation and housing providers generally.

I assure Deputies that the Government, my departmental officials and I are doing everything within our power to mitigate pressures people will face this winter. For tenants who are struggling to meet their obligations to pay rent, in particular due to loss of employment, there are supports available to help. These include the provision of rent supplement and-or the use of additional needs payments from the Department of Social Protection to address individuals' particular needs. Under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme, the Department of Social Protection can make additional needs payments to help meet expenses a person cannot pay from his or her weekly income. This is an overarching term used to refer to exceptional and urgent needs payments and certain supplements to assist with ongoing or recurring costs that cannot be met from someone's own resources and are deemed necessary.

As well as assisting people with fuel, utility bills and repairs, among several other eligible costs, access to additional needs payments is available to assist persons with rent deposits. The social protection schemes are demand-led and payments are made at the discretion of the officers administering the scheme, taking into account the requirements of the legislation and all the relevant circumstances of each case, to ensure the payments target those most in need of assistance. Any person who considers that he or she may have an entitlement to an additional needs payment is encouraged to contact his or her local community welfare service. Otherwise, people may contact the national community welfare office, which will direct callers to the appropriate office.

The housing assistance payment, HAP, is available as a social housing support from local authorities for people who have a long-term housing need. Any household assessed as eligible for social housing is immediately eligible for HAP. Where the circumstances of rent supplement or HAP recipients worsen, they should contact the Department of Social Protection or their local authority, respectively, for any additional help.

This Bill gives us breathing space but it is not a solution to the issues we face. I recognise there are major trade-offs in undertaking such an emergency measure. We need to use this respite to expand capacity by all means available to address the core underlying issues driving our homelessness levels. This means providing more emergency beds, tackling vacancy, using modular homes and improving allocations and relettings to make the most of existing stock. To tackle homelessness in the immediate term, there are more than 500 additional beds due to come on stream in Dublin through a combination of new short-term leasing agreements, the opening of a new facility and the reopening of a facility following temporary closure for essential works. More than half of these additional beds will be operational in the coming weeks and the remainder in the coming months. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, is entering into a leasing agreement to secure the ongoing exclusive use of a further 415 beds that are already in use. The Department has recently given approval to three capital projects in Dublin, one of which will open next month. These will yield an additional 154 emergency beds. A further seven capital projects are being reviewed and have the potential to add a further significant number of emergency beds in Dublin.

Following on from the voids programme of 2020 and 2021, which delivered more than 6,000 units of social housing stock, a new voids programme was introduced for 2022. The allocation of tenancies of void properties is subject to the requirement that a household is on the social housing waiting list and the property is allocated in accordance with the allocation scheme in the relevant local authority area. Homelessness ranks very highly in the order of priorities across all local authority allocation schemes, in recognition that homeless households are particularly vulnerable. The refurbishment and return to use of as many vacant properties as possible, both public and private, can increase available supply and help to alleviate the homelessness situation. Local authorities have been encouraged to be as proactive as possible in returning vacant properties to use by availing of the voids programme funding, their own local authority resources and the use of the buy and renew and repair and lease schemes. I have tasked each local authority to review and improve its allocation and reletting process to ensure each unit is maximised.

The Department is supporting local authorities to acquire homes for social housing for priority purposes, including acquisitions that support a household to exit homelessness and acquisitions with tenants in situto prevent homelessness. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has given local authorities clear instructions and the sanction needed to undertake ramped-up tenant in situpurchases. To expand emergency accommodation in the short term, my Department is also working with the Office of Public Works, OPW, to undertake significant modular home construction. This new delivery mechanism will help swiftly to increase our capacity.

Housing for All continues to deliver homes at scale. Including acquisition and leasing, we are currently projecting that more than 10,000 new social homes will be delivered this year, with record levels of direct new-build construction. It has, yet again, been a year of volatility for the construction sector. The impact of construction products inflation, supply chain issues and rising energy prices have created a difficult delivery environment. However, prices are stabilising and the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, reports supply chain issues are generally resolved. Therefore, we are seeing something of a recovery and will see very strong delivery of social housing in quarter 4.

We have modified the repair and leasing scheme to open up more opportunities to bring accommodation on stream, including by the conversion of commercial units to residential use. Workshops have been held with local authorities to promote increased uptake of the scheme. We are putting a significant focus on the building pipeline for future years and the development of housing delivery action plans have proven very successful in this regard. All local authorities have finalised their plans for social and affordable delivery from 2022 to 2026. These plans will provide an important framework for delivery in the coming years and will be reviewed in light of delivery this year. My Department is also working with the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and Finance on the potential emergency expansion of long-term leasing to deliver an additional 1,000 social housing units. An independent valuation of expressions of interest received is now under way and should be concluded in the coming weeks.

As committed to under Housing for All, the first affordable cost-rental homes are now beginning to come onto the market, some of which were advertised at rates that are 40% to 50% lower than market rent. Cost rental is a State-backed form of tenure aimed at middle-income households under which the price of rent is equal to the cost of building, managing and maintaining the home only and over a set period of time, most usually 40 years. This means prices are not driven by market movements, making them more affordable, and they are not profit-driven. Many cost-rental homes have been tenanted since the passing of the Affordable Housing Act in July 2021, which has facilitated this form of rental tenure.

I turn to the emergency provisions contained in the Bill. It is important, at the outset, to note the exceptions to its provisions. These exceptions are provided in recognition of constitutionally protected property rights and the need to balance the rights of the tenant with those of the landlord. The deferral of notices of termination from taking effect during the winter will not apply where there is a failure by the tenant to comply with his or her obligations under the tenancy. The core rights of a landlord to protect his or her property and to secure a rental income will not be limited by the Bill. Landlords' obligations to their tenants and to third parties, such as neighbours, do not change under the Bill.

I will outline the specific provisions of the Bill, which contains 5 sections. Sections 1 and 5 contain standard provisions dealing with the interpretation, Short Title and collective citation of the Bill. The "winter emergency period" is defined to mean the period commencing on the day after the enactment of the Bill and ending on 31 March 2023.

Section 2 provides for the deferral of a notice of termination where it has been served by a landlord on or before the date of the passing of the Act and specifies a termination date that falls during the winter emergency period, or where a dispute in regard to the termination of a tenancy is referred to the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, under Part 6 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 and a determination order is issued in respect of the dispute that specifies a termination date that falls during the winter emergency period.

In terms of the exceptions, as I have alluded to, the deferral does not apply to a notice of termination where the termination is grounded on the tenant's failure to meet his or her obligations under section 16 of the 2004 Act or where the landlord states in the notice of termination that the reason for the termination is on the ground of a breach of tenant obligations other than to pay rent, on the ground of a breach of a tenant's obligation to pay rent or on the ground that the accommodation no longer suits the tenant's accommodation needs, having regard to the number of bed spaces and the size of the household.

Some concerns have been raised about continuing to allow a landlord to terminate a tenancy during the winter on foot of overcrowding. A number of Deputies have submitted amendments on this issue and we can debate them fully on Committee Stage.

For now, I wish to be clear that the Oireachtas should not seek to prevent a landlord from fulfilling his or her obligations to tenants and their neighbours. Overcrowding can be very serious and a landlord needs the legal right to act to prevent it. It is very rarely used, with less than 2% of all notices of termination referred under it. In reality, only a small such number of notices of termination already issued will be impacted by this exception during the winter emergency period, but it is important in instances of clear health and safety or fire risks.

Section 2(3) of the Bill sets out, in a table, how the deferment of relevant tenancy terminations will operate. As can be seen, the deferment dates operate in a staggered fashion beyond the winter period to ensure that there is no cliff edge at the end of the period, which would put unmanageable pressure on the private rental market and homelessness services. The timing operates to provide proportionately greater protection to those tenants on the shortest termination periods. The aim is to provide additional time to those most in need of extra time to secure alternative accommodation.

Section 3 of the Bill provides that, where a tenant is not in breach of his or her obligations, any notice of termination served by a landlord in respect of a tenancy of less than six months duration during the winter emergency period shall not specify a termination date that falls earlier than 18 June 2023.

Section 4 of the Bill provides for the interoperability of the Bill with the Residential Tenancies Act 2020 introduced to deal with the Covid pandemic. Should a stay on tenancy terminations come into effect under that Act, in the event of people's movements being restricted on public health grounds to within 5 km of their home under section 31A health regulations made by the Minister for Health, the revised termination date that applies to affected tenancies in an area under that Act would apply, if later than the relevant deferred termination date under this Bill. The Bill also provides that a tenant shall not accrue rights under Part 4, Security of Tenure, of the Act of 2004 by virtue of the operation of the deferred, or later, termination dates required under this Bill. The Bill is framed in a proportionate and fair manner in its limitation of landlord’s constitutionally protected property rights.

As legislators, we have shown throughout the pandemic how we can work together quickly to help tenants. I think that we can all appreciate and recognise the sentiment behind this Bill, a sentiment that I believe is shared by the vast majority of Deputies. This Bill will deliver enhanced tenancy protections when they are most needed over the coming winter months. The Government is very aware of the increasing pressure on homelessness services, the limited supply of rental accommodation and the struggles that people will face over the coming winter months. These temporary and emergency measures will protect tenants from the prospect of homelessness by deferring any no fault tenancy terminations from taking place this winter. We will use this breathing space to ramp up emergency supply.

Improving standards, security and affordability for tenants is a key priority for this Government. We will continue with the implementation of Housing for All and significantly increase the supply of housing across the country. While this emergency Bill is necessary and will provide assistance to tenants in the short term, I want to underline that the only solution into the medium and longer term to the crisis in the rental sector and in the wider housing sector is sustainably and quickly to increase our supply of new housing for both rent and purchase. Landlords, big and small, continue to have a key part to play in the provision of a balanced and affordable rental market. Today, the Government is asking the sector to accept limitations on their rights, as property owners, for the greater good. I acknowledge that fact and thank them for their contribution to meeting the challenges that we are now facing. The Government will ensure that we have a rental market that is fit for purpose and this is something that we will return to when we launch the first year review of Housing for All in the coming weeks. I commend this Bill to the House.

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