LAST UPDATE | 14 Mar 2023
SINN FEÍN IS submitting a Dáil motion calling for the eviction ban to be extended until January 2024.
The chamber is not sitting today but will reconvene next week after the St Patrick’s break.
The opposition motion will put renewed pressure on the Government, forcing a vote on the issue the day after the Dáil debates the eviction ban next Tuesday.
The motion states that Ireland “remains in the midst of a housing emergency” and that by choosing to end the eviction ban on 31 March, the government has “increased the stress and insecurity experienced by the 750,000 people, including working families, living in private rented accommodation”.
“The Minister for Housing has admitted that homelessness will increase once the current eviction ban ends… Emergency Homeless Accommodation is at breaking point. The Government has no contingency plan in place to deal with the increase in homeless presentations when the current ban on evictions ends,” the motion states.
It is calling for the Government to extend the ban and the tenant in situ scheme for both social and affordable cost rental tenants.
It is also calling for the use of emergency planning and procurement powers to target vacant and derelict buildings and new building technologies to increase the supply of social and affordable homes above the existing 2023 targets.
The motion also says the government must commence “the biggest social and affordable housing programme in the history of the State so that people can access secure, affordable housing to buy and rent”.
Speaking outside the Dáil this afternoon, Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said his party is urging all TDs, especially independents and government backbenchers “who we know support us on this issue” to vote with them.
There still is an opportunity in the two weeks of the Dáil sitting for the government to bring in their own legislation and extend this ban.
“It is patently clear that the government has no plan in place whatsoever to deal with what the Residential Tenancies Board are telling us are 3,000 eviction notices that will fall due in April, and that’s before we even start counting to those that will fold you in May, or June,” Ó Broin said.
“It’s not about playing politics. It’s about trying to reverse a government decision, and if – particularly – those independents who normally would support the government, and those government backbenchers who publicly have said on the record that they support what we’re calling for, if they support us, that will add additional pressure on government.”
A vote on the issue could spell trouble with all eyes on Government Green Party TDs Neasa Hourigan and Patrick Costello, who have been critical of the decision.
Speaking to reporters in New York last night, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said her party “absolutely appreciate that the ban on evictions is not in and of itself the answer to our housing crisis”.
“We know that it can’t be a permanent feature, but we also know that it is just irresponsible of a Government to move ahead, to take away this protection from renters and from so many people who are in a very, very vulnerable position. So I think common decency has to prevail here,” she said.
Her comments came after McDonald wrote to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar urging him to reverse his Government’s decision to lift the eviction ban.
She said she hoped to get a “positive response” from the Taoiseach, stating: “At the end of the day, it’s simply not acceptable.”
The decision to end the ban was taken by Cabinet last week, with Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien defending the decision saying that it would further reduce the number of rental properties available.
Varadkar has admitted that the eviction ban is both an emotive and difficult issue and that the decision to end it was “hard to defend”.
Speaking in New York yesterday evening, McDonald said it is “very clear” that the Government has not put in place any mitigating measures or any plan to prevent thousand of people becoming homeless.
The Government cannot answer the “very simple straightforward question of where do these families go when faced with a notice to quit, and eviction, and homelessness? Where are these families to go?” she said.
“I want the Government to do the responsible and decent thing and not to throw families, thousands of them to the wolves,” said the Sinn Féin president.
She repeated that a no fault eviction ban is not the in and of itself the answer to the housing crisis.
“That’s not the point we’re making,” she said.
“When the Government has failed to deliver on housing, failed to create any kind of mitigation or protection, “it’s just wrong in those circumstances to end the eviction ban”, she said.
McDonald added:
In an emergency situation like this, society should be seeing an emergency response. They should see a government that is literally pulling out all of the stops.
“So for me, the heart of this problem is that you have a government that says on the one hand, we have a crisis in housing, but who is not prepared to go into full emergency crisis mode to sort this out. And that’s what it’s going to take,” said the Sinn Féin leader.
The key focus now has to be on emergency accommodation, she said.
Reacting to the motion today, Tánaiste Micheál Martin told reporters in New York it was a dishonest move, stating that the date January 2024 really means Christmas time this year.
“This is days after Christmas Day, Sinn Féin are saying we should lift the ban. How credible is that? Does Sinn Féin really think that would happen? Of course it would not happen.
“The advice to government was that if you were minded to keep the eviction ban, you should keep it for two years. And then that would necessitate a very significant narrative around the justification for that in terms of any potential legal challenges, but also more critically, what damage would it do to the long term sustainability of the rental market itself?
“In other words, would that disincentivise anyone from going into the rental market or indeed would ultimately expedite people leaving the market – that was the hard decision we had to make,” he said.
He added: “We didn’t want to make the situation worse, because we do need more properties into the market to be available for people to rent. That’s the core rationale.”
Martin accused Sinn Féin of “playing politics”, calling it “cynical”. The Tánaiste said he criticised the party’s suggestion about extending the ban last week pointing out that they were intending to lift the ban days after Christmas Day.
“They now put in a date of January 24. I mean to me, that’s a very cynical and dishonest maneuver by Sinn Féin and it just illustrates the degree to which they’re playing politics with a very serious issue” he added.
Outside the Dáil this afternoon, Ó Broin said he was asking Varadkar and Tánaiste Micheál Martin: “What are you saying to the families?
What are you saying to the single people, the couples, the parents with children and the pensioners who will have no place to go come 1 April?
“What is your advice to them? What are your directions to them? What is the support that you’re providing for them in those days and weeks in April, May and June, because so far, I haven’t heard anything, either from government, but particularly from the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste.
“In the absence of any realistic support for families who are facing homelessness, or who are just simply facing losing their home, moving in with family and friends, overholding etc, if there is no advice and support from government come April, then the ban on evictions needs to be extended.”
McDonald accused the Government of squandering the last six months when the eviction ban was in place, stating that not enough was done to ramp up housing.
“If you’re going to end an eviction, at a minimum you have to ensure that you have sufficient capacity in your emergency accommodation. That’s that’s your first thing.
“What can be achieved in six or seven months? I think a lot can be achieved, if you have a Government that is focused, determined and accepts that we what we are living through is a crisis and an emergency,” she said.
When asked about homeowners who are returning home to Ireland from abroad, who cannot move back into their own homes due to the eviction ban – a point that the Taoiseach has raised in recent weeks – McDonald said her party put down an amendment to deal with that very issue.
“The Government did not support that amendment,” she said, stating it was voted against.
“I think that would be a perfectly reasonable exemption,” added McDonald.
“The fact is that we are at capacity, there is simply no room for people should they fall homeless,” she said.
Sinn Féin’s motion sets out measures in terms of the use of vacant and derelict buildings, as well as speeding up the system in terms of the procurement and delivery of housing.
Fianna Fáíl TD Paul McAuliffe last night told RTÉ’s Upfront with Katie Hannon that the government decided to not “delay the inevitable” and to put in place “real solutions”.
He described the “tenants in-situ” as a “good example of a permanent solution”, though he acknowledged it “isn’t applicable in every case and won’t protect everybody”.
The tenant-in-situ programme allows Local Authorities to purchase homes where a tenant who is in receipt of Housing Assistance Payments or the Rental Accommodation Scheme has been issued with a notice of termination.
However, Ó Broin described the lifting of the eviction ban as a “one of the decisions that this government has made that I don’t understand”.
While he acknowledged that a ban on evictions isn’t the solution, he told last night’s programme that the government didn’t use the time provided to “put in place additional solutions”.
Meanwhile, Green TD Neasa Hourigan accused the coalition leaders, including her own party leader Eamon Ryan, of lifting the ban “with no real preparation”.
She said she was “shocked to see it [the eviction ban] removed with so little preparation”.
Hourigan added that “kids will moved out of their schools because there is nowhere to stay in their communities”.
The Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) released its latest Housing Market Monitor for quarter four of last year and said that “robust housing supply and mortgage demand will support the housing market in 2023”.
However, the report noted that “downside risks remain to both supply of homes and demand for mortgages due to cost pressures associated with building costs and interest rate increases”.
Brian Hayes, chief executive of the BPFI said “housing supply recovered significantly in 2022, with close to 30,000 house completions during the year”.
That’s a 45% increase on 2021 and he anticipates that close to 27,000 housing units will be delivered this year.
2,108 housing units commenced in January of this year, the highest figure in any January since 2008.
Hayes also noted that first-time buyer mortgage demand remains very strong, with a 36% increase in Help-to-Buy applications when compared to 2021.
- Reporting from Christina Finn in New York, Diarmuid Pepper and Jane Moore
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