Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)

I will read out two examples of emails that come into my constituency office:

It is with a heavy heart I am asking you to find yourself another house to rent. Unfortunately, you cannot wait any longer as this application has been going on since last autumn with a tenant in situ and the eviction notice on the property was up in April and the house prices are increasing every day. We are going to have to act on the eviction notice as we are still none the wiser as to when this is going to happen.

This is from another constituent:

I write to you in a desperate situation seeking your assistance in the following matter. We have three children. The landlord informs us he intends to sell the property to us or on the private market with us as tenants in situ. We are waiting on Fingal County Council as an application has been made. It has been inspected, evaluated, specific circumstances assessed, however, the process has stalled this year, through a lack of funding. The landlord informed us yesterday [by email] that we need to move out of the property.

That is two of the thousands of people who are facing eviction. The cornerstone of the Government programme and its plan is that rents are going to increase. Then, developers and vulture funds will move in and build apartments. The flaw in this thinking is, does the Government honestly expect them to build enough and continue to build to see rents fall? Does the Government honestly believe that the vulture funds and the capitalists that are building these apartments and who are going to get, because of the Government, €2,500, €3,000, €4,000 and if you live in Howth, €5,000 per month, they are going to continue to build and build and see those rents fall, because there will be a surplus in the market? No, they will stop because they will want to keep rents high. It is a disgraceful action being taken by the Government.

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