Sir, – The debate over the current eviction ban throws once again into the limelight the existing unwieldy and complex tenancies legislation, namely the Residential Tenancies Act 2004, as amended.
This poorly drafted legislation has now been amended so many times that it would take a forensic lawyer to decipher exactly some of the implications. Indeed, the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) has itself paid vast sums of money to legal counsel over the years trying to get the correct interpretations in relation to disputes between landlords and tenants.
The current Government reflection on the eviction ban is clearly a time for a more fundamental review of the legislation and indeed serious consideration should be given to the termination of this unwieldy Act and its replacement with more practical and user-friendly legislation.
Indeed, there is a strong argument for a wider review of the relevant constitutional articles in relation to private property, namely 40 and 43, and their replacement with a single unambiguous article which would express more clearly the proper balance which must be struck between the rights of property owners on the one hand and tenants and the wider community interests on the other.
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Such a course of action was recommended, for example, in the Ninth Progress Report of the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution in 2004.
Current legislation is clearly driving landlords from the housing market in droves with very negative consequences for tenants.
Knee-jerk and regular sticking-plaster measures do not provide a solution. – Yours, etc,
TIM RYAN,
(Former RTB
board member),
Dublin 4.
Sir, – Mark Mohan argues that “only a significant policy reversal by our present Government will ease the departure of private landlords” (Letters, March 7th).
He is correct that a significant policy reversal is needed, but not as he thinks.
The rental market has been put into turmoil by the failure of the Government to build enough public rental units to keep up with demand, by its failure to properly regulate the market, by its favouring of large institutional investors with large tax breaks and not enough regulation in the rents they can charge, while overtaxing smaller landlords, and by Government failing to recognise that housing is not just another commercial transaction from which to raise taxes, all of which comes from an ideology that “we mustn’t interfere with the markets”.
The private sector is good at some things, like making money, but building a society or having a social conscience is not one of them.
We elect a Government to govern the country for the betterment of all and to protect us from private industry’s worst excesses.
When it comes to the housing market, the Government has utterly failed, and it does indeed need to “have a significant policy reversal”.
It needs to adopt a different attitude to housing, by waking up to the fact that excessive housing costs are dragging down the rest of the economy, making it impossible for companies to get staff as no accommodation can be found, by the hardship it is causing people who have no security of tenure because private industry chases profits and does not have a social or societal remit, and because the disruptive housing issue has been going on for far too long and is starting to drag the country down.
The Government can fix it by properly regulating the private rental market and by providing more public rental housing, for all income groups, so the worst excesses of the private sector can be nullified and stability can be brought back to people’s lives. – Yours, etc,
DAVID DORAN,
Bagenalstown,
Co Carlow.
Sir, – Mark Mohan should know that those forced into the rental market to put a roof over their heads care little what he or the economists he quotes think about the impact regulations have on the rental sector.
The problems we are suffering are the consequence of Government failure to ensure adequate provision of affordable housing. If the supply of accessible housing existed, the economists and other theorists could spend their days blissfully counting buttons safe in the knowledge that their musings will not contribute, in any way, to the infliction of homelessness on other citizens. – Yours, etc,
JIM O’SULLIVAN,
Rathedmond,
Sligo.
Sir, – If one owns an investment product and learns that it will shortly be illiquid, then the natural reaction is to sell that product. The Government’s initial rent eviction moratorium was a fine example of this: upon its announcement a high percentage of our landlords immediately instructed us to issue termination notices to their tenants because they had decided to sell – “enough is enough” was the mantra. Now there is talk of extending the moratorium, and my phone has not stopped ringing with frustrated landlords at the other end.
Currently, landlords are criminalised and face the threat of prison if they breach tenancy legislation. Landlords are faced with the exhausting bureaucracy of the RTB, regular property inspections by the council, constantly changing legislation, rising interest rates, high tax, unfair rent pressure zone regulations which bizarrely reward greed, as well as ever rising repair and furnishing costs. Most of our landlords tell us that their costs far exceed their rental income. Note that the vast majority of our landlords are good people who want to offer their tenants the highest standards available.
On the other hand, tenants can wilfully disregard their obligations to pay rent in the knowledge that it will realistically take 18 to 24 months to remove them without sanction in the current system. The vast majority of tenants are decent law-abiding people, but a proper equilibrium must be struck to keep landlords in the market.
This Government urgently needs to implement changes that will properly address what is now a dysfunctional market. There has to be more carrot and less stick. Use tax incentives to encourage long-term rental leases and to incentivise building. Create bonds that the Irish can invest in to support the required growth. Stop making our diminishing landlord population the scapegoat, and recognise them as part of the solution.
It is in the interests of both tenants and landlords to have a functioning property market with available supply. The attempt by all political parties at vote-winning with a moratorium is extremely transparent. I respectfully ask them all to please put their packets of plasters away and look to create realistic long-term solutions. – Yours, etc,
GAVIN MULCAHY,
Get Let Letting Agents,
Smithfield,
Dublin 7.
A chara, – If the eviction ban is to be extended it will essentially hold the small amount of landlords left to ransom. The general lack of understanding of simple housing economics in this country is frightening. – Is mise,
ROSS GARVEY,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – In addressing the issue of the ban on evictions from residential properties, the Government is taking on only one side of the problem. The other is the limit on rent increases. These are two sides of the same coin.
If any landlord needed an incentive to sell up, the collision between rapidly rising costs and interest rates with nearly fixed rents is it.
If price is fixed and costs aren’t, the result is plummeting supply.
When the rent pressure zones were set up, inflation wasn’t such an issue. The zones were considered a neat solution by the Government to the rising cost of rented accommodation. But the limitations of this master-stroke are now evident in the disappearing stock of homes for rent.
Whatever way the problem is viewed, the Government has a tough decision, one it has brought upon itself. But introducing some upward flexibility to the rent limits might reduce the incentive for landlords to quit, thus reducing the potential adverse impact of lifting the ban on evictions.
Needless to say a Government decision to allow evictions, even under limited circumstances, and also allow faster rent increases, even if not to market levels, would look awful.
But the reality would be a step towards stabilising or perhaps even increasing supply. – Yours, etc,
JIM DORGAN,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.