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THE GOVERNMENT HAS come in for criticism from opposition party members, housing experts and NGO officials for failing to signal measures to prevent families living in buy-to-let properties being evicted.
Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy on Tuesday got Cabinet approval for the general scheme of the new Residential Tenancies Bill.
On the back of this he announced a number of new measures that will be enacted should the bill pass into law.
These include making it a criminal offence for landlords to raise rents by over 4% a year in designated Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs); as well as increasing the investigative powers of the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), among other measures.
However, the Bill as of now contains no provisions which would prevent single adults and families from being evicted when their landlord decides to sell the property they are staying in.
According to homeless charity Focus Ireland, this is a significant cause of family homelessness and needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.
When questioned by TheJournal.ie on Tuesday over whether any action would be taken to increase protections in this area, Murphy said:
“Focus talked about this last year about protecting tenants in situ when a property is being sold and the idea that you might be able to have that property then sold on to another landlord.
“And I am going to be discussing that with (Finance Minister) Paschal Donohoe. I did flag this earlier this year that myself and (Children’s) Minister Zappone have discussed this at length.
It is something that I’ll be approaching the Minister for Finance on in the budget negotiations about what incentives we could put in place to allow property to be sold by tenants in situ.
Focus Ireland amendment
Homelessness charity Focus Ireland in fact put forward an amendment in December 2016 when the latest Residential Tenancies Act was being passed through the Dáil.
At the time provisions were being made by then-Housing Minister Simon Coveney to pass the laws that would allow rent controls to come into effect in certain areas (RPZs).
Focus Ireland asked that an amendment be included to the proposed law that would prevent evictions for tenants in buy-to-lets as outlined above.
Buy-to-lets are investment properties which landlords have bought to rent out. Tenants are typically evicted when the property is being sold.
The so-called Focus Ireland amendment was tabled by opposition party members, but was defeated when Fianna Fáil abstained from the vote and Fine Gael voted against it.
Latest figures for February show that there are currently 1,739 families with 3,755 children homeless and living in emergency accommodation in Ireland – an unprecedented number.
Focus Ireland has said that had its amendment been adopted into law in 2016, in the region of 250 fewer families and 500 fewer children would have been made homeless last year.
“Every time organisations like ourselves point out a probable and sustainable solution it takes them four years to listen to us,” Mike Allen – director of advocacy with the organisation – told TheJournal.ie.
They’ll listen to us but they’ll do it in a number of years time… They’re just not responding in anything like the timescale that’s needed.
Allen said that Focus Ireland would welcome the introduction of the proposed measures announced by Minister Murphy yesterday, but that far more needed to be done.
“They have not grasped the scale of the problem,” he said.
“Maybe what they’re doing at the moment will be different but up until now they’ve constantly failed to understand the scale of the challenge they’re facing.
“The underlying problem driving homelessness is that there are more people looking for places to live than there are places to live.
The mismatch is getting worse year to year, and while supply is growing, demand is growing faster than supply… So it’s inevitable that homelessness will continue to grow.
Allen’s concerns are echoed by housing experts, with academic Rory Hearne warning that there was an incoming “tsunami of homelessness” coming from the buy-to-let sector.
“There’s another tsunami of homelessness coming from the buy-to-let sector,” Hearne said on RTÉ’s Late Debate last night.
There’s over 10 to 15,000 properties where tenants are in place that could be repossessed in the coming years in the rental sector by receivers where receivers are in place.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said that protections for families living in buy-to-let properties need to be introduced as a matter of urgency.
He said that if it’s not included in the new Bill, Sinn Féin would be tabling an amendment to have it included, and Ó Broin criticised Fine Gael for not allowing the amendment to be added in 2016.
“The argument [used then] was that it could have a negative effect on investment in the private rental sector,” he said.
“But it’s easier now for a new landlord who buys the property to circumvent the 4% rent caps.
We think that by not having the Focus Ireland Amendment the government is making it easier for landlords who are buying rental properties to break the 4%.
Sinn Féin on Tuesday said that it would be holding off on tabling a motion of no confidence in Murphy, after it had signalled that it would do so. Party leader Mary Lou McDonald said that it was delaying the motion due to the importance of the upcoming referendum campaign.
She was strongly critical of government, today saying that “the clock was ticking” on Murphy’s time as minister.
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Global? Start at home first.
This government needs to do more to support the largest employer in Ireland, SME’s.
Great country if you are Google etc. God help anyone looking to run their own business tho!
Large players like Google actually distort the market here, welcome as they are.
You have mid level managers thinking 80k is their right, not something that is unheard of in most of Europe. Rent and property prices in Dublin driven crazy by high paying multi-nationals which destroy the competitiveness of the country.
Most of our exports come from 40 US owned companies, over 85% in fact. What a position to place oneself in.
Multi-nationals are lovely to have but they are in terms of economic sustainability and jobs they are a distant second in importance to SME’s.
Double edged sword,
Seanie, multinationals were our one saving grace when the sh!t hit the fan in 2007 so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss their importance. They also create service industries around them which are equally just as important. And if as you say they represent 85% of our experts what do you propose replaces that? It’s not like we have a tonne of natural resources to tap into.
It is the sheer volume of the Pharma industry that distorts the exports.
We live in hope that America will not need someday to refocus tax at home in a recession or jobs at home for political reasons. What a gamble.
Our trade balance is a complete mirage due to Multi-nationals.
Focusing in on SME’s is much more important than Multinationals, they provide most of this countries jobs and spending.
We’ll never reduce unemployment just using multi-nationals, we’ll never have a sustainable tax base or economy by over relying on them.
There are a lot of sme’s that can be brought up to being large players.
Companies like Kerry Group, Glanbia CRH etc are leading global players in their fields, they are some of our multi-nationals, investing large sums all over globe.
Rental increases have nothing to do with google. It’s to do with the lack of housing supply due to a collapsed construction industry based on FF policy.
Don’t forget the planners J. They are still insisting developers build apartments in the middle of no where despite the obvious demand for 3 and 4 bed houses. I’m amazed this isn’t getting more media attention.
Govt too busy bending over for foreign multinationals and rolling out the red carpet for snakes like Donald Trump to help Irish SMEs. I see they’ve brought in an extra USC level now for self employed people. Shows you where their priorities lie.
Self employed earning over 100k. Hardening throttling enterprise is it?
A self employed person has more right to 100k than a high level manager in someone else’s business.
I haven’t much problem with the higher charge at that level but it is very wrong that it is just targeting the self employed. It should be across the board.
The higher tax rate for the self employed who are on reasonable wages shows that the self employed are actively targeted for bleeding.
C’mere to me, where do I get a job that pays €29 per hour??
Primary teacher!
Be a crappie hooker……
When is the next protest against water charges in Dublin?
NEXT Water charge protest: [NOVEMBER, 1st. DUBLIN]
Would like to see the relationship between average gross pay and net pay between Ireland and rest of EU. We have high gross salaries but I imagine they are so high to make up for all the tax and deductions. Talking Private sector here. Public Sector is another animal completely.
In most of Western Europe the tax take is much higher on average, never mind that property tax and water rates are also higher.
The tax wedge is much higher across Western Europe people, ye might not like that fact but that is still a fact.
That’s simply not true Seanie.
A useful graph to include would be each countries % spend of GDP. Most of the EE states with low cost of labour have less than 40% of GDP spent by governments. This with higher % spend have higher hourly rates. Relationship is striking
To take on them we will have to kick every high productivity business out of Ireland.
That is the key difference, most of them do not have any, at any level.
How is competing with high unemployment, low value businesses with poor national infrastructures a good idea.
Luddite.
That’s not my point at all. But I won’t waste my time or yours educating you
Why are labor costs in Ireland always so distorted?
Fact is the Irish worker has 20 days paid holidays in a year.
In Germany the Worker has 30 days paid annual leave ?
First three days of sick leave is at the employees expense.
In Germany sick pay is covered 100% from day (for a limited period of time)
The books are being seriously cooked here it is a complete lie that the Irish worker is so expensive.
However compare the wages of Lawyers,doctors and the public service teachers and politicians.
Our s are some of the worlds most expensive. The Wage issue is pure profiteer propaganda.
So what if we are still above the EU average, we are cheaper on that scale than most of our competitors. We’ll never beat countries like Spain or Portugal or Cyprus on wages, unless we consider cutting wages by 50% and kicking out the high wage multi-nationals.
We pay professional people, senior managers, doctors etc way too much, in many cases double even what wealthy European countries pay.
Legal fees here are outrageous and it is very wrong and selfish that no Govt. have tackled the Law Society here and its closed shop. It is an extortion on Irish society and deeply damaging to business here.
Do you ever take a break from commenting on here. Find yourself a hobby well ye
Ah yes, it’d be great if we could just not pay all the people that do all the work and watch the money roll in. A capitalists wet dream.
Welcome to Jobridge Ireland…
Yeah great place u can pay your employees as little as possible. Zero hour contracts jobbridge.fcukn assault on the working class
“Is Ireland really ‘the best small country in the world to do business in’?”
Not with that preposition dangling on the end of its sentence it’s not!
I guess I’m just going to have to pay a few per cent extra tax to set up my soon-to-be-highly-lucrative grammar auditing consultancy in a country with some syntactic credibility. Well done Ireland – that’s one more highly skilled job you’ve allowed to slip through your bungling fingers!!!
Only prescriptive grammarians would present such a narrow, limited and mostly historical interpretation of syntax; it belongs back in the 18th century along with Bishop Lowth. Most modern grammarians accept the proposition that language is better analysed in terms of a lexical approach.
Q. Is Ireland…blah blah blah?
A. No
Enda says it is
No
Support Small businesses
Great country if your name is O’Brien
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