People Before Profit have submitted a bill to Cabinet proposing a ban on winter evictions.
The bill will seek to ban all residential tenancy evictions until March 2023. The political party stated the bill is a direct response to the cost of living crisis and is warranted due to the current housing emergency.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett stated that the bill would be discussed on Wednesday if Government did not act beforehand in addressing the issue. He said that an eviction ban was “well past time” and fully legal due to the current housing crisis.
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The TD wrote in a Tweet: “Today we have submitted an emergency bill to the Dáil to ban evictions. This must be done as a matter of urgency. If the government doesn’t do it, we will be debating and voting on it on Thursday 27th October.”
However, some landlords have strongly objected to the bill and have questioned its legality. Mary Conway, chairperson of the Irish Property Owners Association, told RTE that the ban was “unconstitutional” and would lead to more landlords exiting the market.
She told RTE: “This is a knee jerk reaction and once again the landlords are the scapegoats. We don’t want people to be put out of their homes, but landlords still need to ensure they remain solvent. If landlords are not in a position to pay their mortgages, the banks will turn up and tenants will end up homeless anyway.”
The news follows a grim outlook for homelessness in the coming months. The Department of Housing revealed that over 10,805 people were in emergency accommodation during August, a record high for homelessness in recent years.
A temporary moratorium on evictions was put in place in 2020 to assist tenants during the Covid-19 pandemic. Focus Ireland stated that the temporary moratorium had a positive impact on homelessness figures and led to a significant drop in people seeking emergency accommodation while in place.
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