Since the announcement was made last June of the proposed changes to take effect, the Minister, Deputy Browne, and the Government have unleashed havoc upon thousands of renters out there who are now facing notices to quit. In the third quarter of last year, 5,400 tenants received a notice to quit. That is up from about 3,000 in the previous year. For the people who are coming through my clinics in Dublin Central, it is really distressing because they have nowhere to go. We have spoken at length about the extortionate high rents in Dublin. There is a lot of talk about the market rate but we know the market rate is set by a small number of institutional investors who set the price for everyone else in the rental market, particularly in the main urban centres. This is driving the eye-watering rents of €2,500 that we are seeing in many parts of this city. This evening I want to raise specifically the two new classes of landlords, and by extension tenants, that will be created in this legislation. These are landlords with four or more units, and those with four or less units. What I am seeing at the moment is three examples of landlords strategically evicting tenants to avoid the so-called "Tyrrelstown amendment". They are evicting groups of tenants in fewer than ten units. This is to avail of the magic number of below ten. They are doing this over a staggered period of months. I do not know how widespread this practice is. I suppose the key issue is what the RTB is seeing in this. We would have been critical in the past about data collection within the RTB, and we believe there needs to be an awful lot more reporting, but the critical issue here is that we now have different thresholds being set out in the rental legislation. The Tyrrelstown amendment refers to landlords with ten or more holdings wishing to sell. Of course, we now have this new provision for landlords with four. We need to level the playing field. We need hugely to tighten up on the Tyrrelstown amendment and we need to make sure we do not see what I am calling strategic evictions. One is a unit along the north quays, a building which was in NAMA and was in receivership for 13 years. The minute that debt was discharged the company has gone into liquidation and the sale is happening. The other is for renovation purposes. When I look at the notice of termination, I have to question whether all of the tenants have to be evicted for the renovations that are being proposed. I think there is a lot of gaming of the system happening at the moment. The appeals have been made to the Minister not to introduce this rent reset and to row back on the profound changes being introduced, which are already wreaking havoc on the system. In particular, we need to look closely at the mass eviction of fewer than ten units. What trends are happening in the RTB at this point? We need to move speedily to ensure there is a level playing field between the four and the ten. I know my colleague, Deputy Sheehan, will be bringing forward amendments on this.

Sentiment score: -0.05