The Government is yet to adopt a position on a Sinn Féin Bill that would give students living in so-called digs accommodation recourse to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) for the purpose of dispute resolution and also bring those properties within the remit of the rent pressure zone system.
The Bill, an amendment to the Residential Tenancies Act seeking to enhance legal protections for students living in digs and similar arrangements, will be debated in the Dáil on Tuesday.
Groups including the Union of Students in Ireland have repeatedly highlighted the legal grey area in which students living in digs find themselves.
Housing charity Threshold previously warned that they “effectively have no rights”, largely due to their legal classification as licensees rather than tenants. It means this type of accommodation is essentially unregulated under the existing Residential Tenancies Acts, leaving the thousands of students who rely upon it vulnerable to late-notice evictions and a range of other issues.
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Introduced in February by Sinn Féin spokeswoman on higher education Mairéad Farrell and the party’s housing spokesman, Eoin Ó Broin, the Bill would, if passed, oblige homeowners renting out their homes under the Government’s rent-a-room scheme to provide their tenants with access to a rent book.
Among other things, it would also require homeowners to provide students with a 30-day notice period before they can be asked to vacate the property. Students would also be given recourse to the RTB for dispute resolution purposes and would be allowed, as a rule of thumb, to have locks on their doors to protect their privacy, something that was particularly important for women, Sinn Féin said.
The Bill does not attempt to fundamentally change the licenser-licensee relationship into a tenant-landlord relationship but merely to provide students living in digs with some of the protections afforded to tenants. It also creates new obligations for students such as paying their rent on time.
Ms Farrell said the protections were particularly important given that the Government had sought to make the rent-a-room scheme more attractive for homeowners. Homeowners are eligible for tax relief up to €14,000 for rental income through the scheme and the Coalition recently approved legislation for this income to be exempted from medical card and GP visit card assessment.
“We have no problem with the State using the tax code to encourage people to rent rooms to students to help deal with the student accommodation crisis,” Ms Farrell said. “However, this should not come with no strings attached. In return for receiving a tax break, which in some instances is more valuable than an actual landlord would receive, there should be some conditionality.
“This conditionality should involve providing some basic protections like a degree of privacy, a notice period, access to the RTB for dispute resolution, and so on.”
In response to queries, a spokesman for the Department of Housing said a memo would be circulated to Cabinet before the Bill was debated in the Dáil on Tuesday. “No decision on a position has been taken yet,” he said.
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