Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have tabled a number of amendments to this section. Many deal with drafting and technical matters, but there are also a couple of key issues.

Senator Murnane O'Connor referred to the proposal that we reduce the number of units in the so-called Tyrrelstown amendment from 20 to five units or more. We know that 0.54% of landlords are covered by the current proposal of 20 units. The 20-unit provision that purports to deal with the situation in Tyrrelstown and other areas would not go very far as it only covers a small number of landlords. By reducing the number to five or more, we would cover a wider range of landlords. Nonetheless, landlords who have five or more units are, we believe, professional landlords. We emphasise that we are not in any way impinging on their right to sell their property. Rather, we are simply saying they should not have the right to evict their tenants and sell properties on. For every one landlord there are potentially five families in residential units. If 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 landlords are affected by the provision referring to five units or more, in each case one can multiply by the figure by five in order to calculate the large numbers of families who are affected. We want to ensure that when properties change hands there are no inadvertent consequences leading to homelessness.

There are many figures in the Hooke and MacDonald report. I will refrain from reading out the detail of the report, but will instead provide one figure as an example. We know that under the capital gains tax waiver a large number of investors and vulture funds came to Ireland to take advantage of the fact they could hold to a property for seven years and gain tax advantage from so doing. The waiver ran from 2012 until 2014. Hooke and MacDonald describe how towards the end of 2014 over 3,000 residential units had been purchased in Dublin by international investors. The report is very explicit. It states that the budget measure, which provided the capital gains tax exemption for properties purchased prior to 31 December 2014 and held for seven years, has proved to be an attractive stimulus for investors and the intensification of buying activity is occurring prior to the cut-off date.

A significant number of landowners and landlords in the property market entered it because of the tax waiver involved. They will leave the market in three or four years' time and would of course prefer to sell properties that are vacant because they will make more profit by so doing. They are immune to the pressures of public opinion because, in many cases, the investors will move to the next place that is in crisis and purchase there.

Our amendments ensure that the proposal in the Bill does what it sets out to do, namely, address the dangers of property flipping and consequent homelessness. We co-sign and support the proposal that the figure of 20 units or more be reduced to five or more. We have made a number of other suggestions which I will not enumerate. For example, we sought a reduction in the provision that allowed for 20% profit to be the bar - it should instead be 30% or 40%.

Lorcan Sirr, writing in The Sunday Times,said a landlord could drive a coach and four through the provisions in the Bill and that the bar which asks landlords to justify large-scale evictions by simply saying that they show they can make a better profit than 20% is too low. Any letting agent would be able to prove that. The other part of the proposal suggests it is unduly unfair that landlords should not be allowed to exercise mass evictions. The phrase "undue unfairness" is far too loose and wide in this regard.

The Minister of State has genuine people working in his Department who are endeavouring to tighten this area. However, we have not received proposals from the Department on tightening this area. We have put forward seven or eight amendments, one or two of which I will signal now that we intend to press. The Minister of State should ensure that the bar would at least include a change from "or" to "and" so that landlords who propose to throw people out of their apartments at a time of sale would, at a minimum, have to show not only that they can make a profit but that they need the profit and would suffer undue hardship if they did not accept it.I also have amendments to remove the entire section, because subsection 35A(3) is unacceptably loose. I ask that the Minister of State accept at least this most reasonable and mild of our amendments, which would ask that landlords proposing to evict their tenants in properties of five or more, if we are successful in that amendment, or 20 or more, would have to meet at least two bars of proof. "Undue unfairness" is a loose term and I cannot imagine any landlord worth his or her salt who could not find some narrative to say he or she was suffering "unfairness" which would allow him or her to proceed in this regard. I apologise for speaking too long. I know we are keen to move the debate forward. I ask the Minister to accept the amendments, or we will have to press them.