By Jake Mc Laughlin
A motion to accelerate the progress of the People Before Profit (PBP) Solidarity Eviction Ban Bill 2022 has failed to pass in the Dáil following a vote on Wednesday evening.
The votes were counted at 52-69 against the motion.
The bill moved to the committee stage of the Dáil back in February but has not progressed since, prompting PBP to claim that the Government had purposely delayed the bill by not conducting an examination through the Select Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
The committee stage involves a section-by-section examination of the bill where amendments may be made by both Government and opposition members.
Had the motion passed, the bill would have been automatically moved past the committee stage, bringing it a step closer to becoming state law.
The bill seeks to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 by reinstating a ban on no-fault evictions for an “emergency period” of 12 months.
Debating the motion on Wednesday morning, PBP TD Richard Boyd Barrett said that since the Government lifted the previous temporary eviction ban in March, there has been a large increase in termination notices for tenancies, with 5,735 notices of termination issued from April to June 21, 21% higher than the 4,753 notices of termination in the first quarter of 2023.
Mr Boyd Barrett said that current statistics indicated that a large increase in the number of homeless people is likely in the coming winter months, necessitating the urgent reintroduction of an emergency ban.
“There is no doubt the Government’s decision to lift the eviction ban has made the situation worse and it is Orwellian that the Government claims this is not the case.”
Dáil chart outlining the results of the vote. Source: oireachtas.ie
In the same debate, Junior Housing Minister Kieran O’Donnell said that the temporary ban “did not have the desired impact in reducing homelessness numbers”.
“Any merit in introducing an eviction ban in the short term would be countered in the medium to long term by a significantly reduced housing supply for rent. Landlords would continue to exit the market and the signal would be to avoid any further investment in the sector,” he said.
“At the crux of everything we do is the need to increase the supply of housing. Introducing an eviction ban would not do that,” he added.
Mr Boyd Barrett said that although people continued to enter homelessness during the temporary ban, “the vast majority of those did so because they had received notice to quit prior to the introduction of the temporary ban”.
He added that despite Government arguments suggesting an eviction ban would encourage landlords to leave the market, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) had recorded a seven percent increase in privately rented homes between April 2016 and April 2022.
CSO statistics were noted to conflict with numbers put forward by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) which stated that tenancies registered from 2017 to 2021 fell by almost 12 percent.
The RTB has said that differences in data collection methods are a primary reason behind the contrasting statistics, with the CSO adding that census data is generally completed by tenants, whereas RTB registrations are made by the landlord.
Considering the conflicting data, Mr Boyd Barrett said that the differing figures are a result of institutional investors and landlords failing to register with the RTB.
After the vote, Mr Boyd Barrett took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to protest the result describing it as “A cowardly choice” made by the Government.
Source: @RBoydBarrett on X
As of June 2023, 12,600 individuals were recorded accessing emergency accommodation. Almost 4,000 of those were under the age of 18, according to a report issued by the Department of Housing Local Government and Heritage.
Data table supplied by Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Sinn Féin TD Eoin Ó Broin claims that current homelessness figures fail to include individuals in domestic violence refuges, direct provision or those sleeping in hostels funded by religious orders.
“It does not even begin to contemplate the unknown number of people who are hidden homeless and are forced to sofa surf or sleep in overcrowded, cramped or unsuitable conditions with family and friends,” he said.
“Even if you take those initial categories, the real level of adults and children in emergency accommodation tonight is somewhere closer to 18,000.”
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