Landlords moving to evict families via ‘legal loophole’, says Labour leader Ivana Bacik

Landlords are using a “legal loophole” to evict multiple tenants despite a ban being in place until the end of March, the Dáil has heard.

Labour leader Ivana Bacik said tenants in 20 apartments across two houses on Rathmines Road in her Dublin Bay South constituency face eviction with some of them there more than 10 years and others in place for 20 years, paying more than €1,000 or €1,200 for a single-bed apartment.

The former professor of law said the company that owns the property is using “what can only be described as a legal loophole in section 35A of the Residential Tenancies Act to take these families’ homes away from them”.

She said the company says the market value would drop by 20 per cent with the tenants in situ and the landlord would “ensure undue hardship” as a result.

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Ms Bacik said the company reportedly owned 70 apartments across the city with property investments worth €20 million in 2019 and this put “undue hardship” in context.

The Labour leader also highlighted the case of 100 residents at Tathony House in Kilmainham where the landlord had also invoked section 35A.

‘Act now’

“You should be acting to protect tenants’ homes. A home should not be a commodity,” Ms Bacik told Taoiseach Micheál Martin.

She said, “we need to ensure that undue hardship for those renting, the families going to be put out of their homes as a result of these evictions is what is prioritised in our laws, not the undue hardship for landlords”.

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, who has repeatedly raised the situation of the Tathony House residents, pointed to the visitors’ gallery and said that some of those residents under threat of eviction were there. Mr Boyd Barrett said the Tathony House residents were being evicted by a landlord who had a “massive rent roll of €750,000 a year. This, for them, is literally a life and death situation and they have done nothing wrong.”

The Dún Loaghaire TD urged the Taoiseach to use the €500 million unspent funds in the housing budget to buy these properties and secure the rights of the tenants.

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The Taoiseach told the two TDs that Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien would work with Dublin City Council and the tenants to “see what can be done”.

He said “we will also make sure that we can support the tenants in affirming their rights and entitlements” under the legislation.

Mr Martin added that “from what has been said, maybe the calls being made by the landlords in respect of this Act may not be the correct ones, legally”.

‘Rights of landlords’

He insisted that all the legislation had been about security of tenancy and trying to provide extra protection. But he said that the purchase of properties with tenants in situ “cannot just apply to every single specific case that arises no matter how difficult it is”.

Insisting that the proper response was to increase supply and build more houses, Mr Martin said “there is a threshold” at some point about where the State gets involved and “buys up everything”.

He added that the eviction ban had to be balanced between “the rights of landlords to sell their properties and receive a fair return on their investment and the right of tenants to security of tenure” and protection from eviction until the end of March at the earliest.