Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for once again attending the House to discuss residential tenancies and protections. We will support the Bill, but I will not respond to the macho posturing of being told to put our money where our mouths are and vote against the Bill. The Opposition is allowed to table constructive amendments and call out where the Bill falls down while supporting the overall protection of tenants.I will not have anyone tell me that we are not allowed to do that. This is the fourth time that legislation to protect renters has been taken in this Oireachtas. Each time the Opposition has offered constructive amendments, many of which would have provided renters with certainty and stability a long time ago. For example, Senator McDowell identified the issue with the 5 km limit. Given that he is one the most eminent legal and political brains in the country, the Government would do well to listen to him when we talk about tying the eviction ban to the 5 km limit. The Opposition proposed many amendments on that when the proposal first came before the House. We argued against tying the State's hands by linking the ban to the 5 km limit and said the Minister should decide on public health grounds whether the ban should be kept in place. The Government did not listen and decided to tie it to the 5 km limit, despite there being no good legal or political reason.

I remind the House that it is not the Attorney General who decides on the constitutionality of any measure. The Supreme Court is the only body that can decide the constitutionality of any Bill. If ever there was a time for a government to back renters and test a Bill before the Supreme Court, it is during the biggest public health emergency in 100 years.

This week, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, said this legislation safeguarded tenants in the face of an ever-threatening pandemic and that the Government had prevented turmoil in the rental system. That is not the case. The piecemeal approach to private renters in the past year has left tenants and, indeed, landlords, of whose rights the Government is so clearly mindful, with stress and uncertainty.

The report published by the Residential Tenancies Board this week specifically noted recent research which indicated that households in the private rented sector suffered a greater economic hit relative to other tenures during the March to June lockdown due to a higher concentration of employment in sectors most severely impacted by the pandemic. Longer restrictions will, therefore, have a disproportionate impact on households in the rental sector. It is against this backdrop that we are here, yet again, talking about rights for tenants. While the Government spin is that it has taken drastic action to safeguard renters during the pandemic, it has done only the bare minimum every time. With each successive Bill it places before the Houses, it takes away protections it said it was putting in place. That is also the case with its proposal to insert a new section 2 in the legislation.

I will give a case study from Threshold which shows how people can fall into rental arrears without losing a job due to Covid. Marcella was receiving rent supplement when she was directed to transfer to the housing assistance payment, HAP. She set about putting the paperwork together and following up with the landlord for him to submit his documents. However, the landlord delayed doing this. Within three weeks, and before the HAP documents were submitted, the rent supplement was stopped. Marcella paid the rent herself for two months but could not afford to continue doing so. Despite the landlord having delayed the paperwork to have the HAP set up, he issued Marcella with a notice of termination for rent arrears. Marcella, not knowing what to do, left the home and slept in her car for a while before finding somewhere else to live. She contacted Threshold when the landlord pursued her for the rent arrears and it assisted her with the RTB. This is a case where someone could potentially be evicted under section 2, even though we are still in the middle of a pandemic. As Senator Fitzpatrick correctly pointed out, the pandemic has not only had an effect on the rental sector. It has also affected the construction sector. There will be a lag, extending into next year, for people who are now in private residential tenancies. For the sake of simplicity and for the security of renters, we should safeguard renters at least until 2022 and put in place strategies to try to counteract the slowdown in construction.

If we decide in April to relax the 5 km limit, which many people desperately want, no-fault evictions will return although we remain in the middle of a pandemic.Evictions to look after a wide circle of extended family members will return. Evictions for potential sale will return at some point in the future. I have raised in this House on a number of occasions that I am not going beyond the 5 km limit. A family on my road potentially will be facing eviction if the 5 km limit is left behind. They are a married couple with two kids and they have a stay on eviction. The need for substantial renovations is the reason they have been given for their impending eviction and the only reason they have been able to be in their home with their kids, who I see every day, is because of the eviction ban. I also know of somebody else who has been told by her landlord that he is considering selling up and moving to Spain and she might have to start looking for somewhere else to live. The landlord is re-evaluating his life as a result of the pandemic. The lives of those two families will potentially be disrupted with no alternative in terms of moving into somewhere secure because we will still be in the middle of this pandemic.

Before the pandemic, it is estimated that one in ten households missed a rental payment due to financial difficulties. Nobody should be in any doubt that a higher proportion of people will miss payments in the next number of years. The procedures previously introduced by the Government for those in arrears are insufficient and have been described as overly complex by several stakeholders, including Threshold and the Simon Community. Furthermore, we know that the engagement with these procedures by renters has been very low. That is not the fault of the renters, it is the fault of the overly-complicated procedures and the criminal sanction attached to them. The solution for those renters who have been unable to engage in this complicated procedure is not to abandon those in the middle of a pandemic. Opening the door to evictions because of rental arrears will put many people and families in private residential tenancies at significant risk of losing their homes.

I ask the Minister of State to consider these circumstances. I ask him to make the case to Government that if it removes the 5 km restriction, it should consider extending the eviction ban for people in the private rental sector regardless. We are still in the middle of a pandemic. I ask the Minister of State to please give renters certainty that they will be able to stay in their own homes until we are out of this pandemic.