Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien’s officials knew about the tsunami of eviction notices coming down the tracks weeks before the Government decided to lift the evictions ban, it has emerged.
A major political row has erupted after it was revealed the Department was aware 9,000 official NoTs (Notices to Quit) had been issued in the second half of 2022, though the minister insists he was not. Sinn Fein’s housing spokesman Eoin O Broin said that he found it hard to believe ministers didn’t have the figures if their officials had them.
And Labour’s Ivana Bacik said that if the figures had been made available before the Dail vote on the ban it would have made a big difference. Mr O’Brien has insisted he was never informed of the figures by his officials, who knew about the numbers for Q3 and Q4 in January and February.
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Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said they had “indications” that eviction numbers would spike, but the decision to end the ban was based on many factors. And Tanaiste Micheal Martin tried to distance himself and the rest of the Government leadership from the controversy by saying they had only been given preliminary info and that it was “outrageous” to suggest otherwise.
The Q4 figures showed more than 4,300 eviction notices were issued in October, November and December. This was on top of more than 4,700 issued already in the third quarter of the year.
The Taoiseach said: “What I want to make very, very clear, there will be people who will try and create a false impression that if we had had these exact numbers, that we would have made different decisions. That’s absolutely not the case.”
Mr O Broin said: “The Department of Housing received this information on January 19 and February 7, a full month before the government decided to end the ban on no-fault evictions on March 7. It is hard to imagine any set of circumstances where Department of Housing Officials would not have shared this information with the minister in advance of such a significant decision.”
Ms Bacik said: “The political decision to lift the eviction ban was apparently made by the government without any evidence basis. Had this information been publicly released last week, as had been expected, there is no doubt it would have changed the tone of Oireachtas debates on the eviction ban.”
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