OPINION: National scandal of families being evicted by landlords

WE have reached a situation as regards property which can only now be described as obscene. Latest figures last week showed us that there are a record 10,568 people homeless in Ireland, 3,137 of those children, including 1,423 families.

All at the same time as Government Minister of State Robert Troy had to resign because he couldn’t remember to include details of all his 11 properties - nine of which are rented – in the Dáil Register of Members’ Interests.

Robert Troy resigned as a junior minister on Wednesday of last week. On Friday of last week RTE News broadcast an item about Caroline Donoghoe of Kells, Co Meath who, with her four children, two of whom are special needs, is being being evicted from their home because the landlord wants to sell.

Her case illustrates starkly the current immoral situation in our laws whereby the right to sell a house overrides the right to have a home. It is scandalous that a family can be thrown on the roadside like this.

Looking at our own history, we like to lament the suffering of our ancestors at a time of foreign rule when they were evicted from their homes by heartless landlords assisted by the full panoply of state – courts, police, army. It contributed in no small way to the sentiment which drove the fight for Irish independence.

What an appalling comment on our Irish State, and how we have used our freedom this past 100 years, that we are evicting our most vulnerable people – aided by the full legal panoply of that State – in the interests of private property. How things have changed since we got rid of the British!

Should we expect more? A look at the property portfolio of our TDs and Senators suggests we should not.

A total 77 TDs and Senators, representing 35% of members of the Houses of the Oireachtas, are landlords. They include members of Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, the Green Party, Sinn Fein, Independents. In other words, members of all three Government parties and of the main Opposition party.

Those 77 are among the 165,706 (as of the end of 2020) private landlords in this State, representing about 3% of our population. It is a mighty lobby group that is so disproportionately represented in the Houses of the Oireachtas.

It is galling to have to listen to the seemingly endless special pleading for private landlords in the Dail and elsewhere, which has become so prominent in debate around the housing crisis generally. Now perhaps we understand why, when we realise there are so many private landlords in the Dail and Seanad.

It is not good enough. Why pussy foot around private landlords anymore than people in any other line of business? Yes, currently they are needed and the last thing anyone wants is that they should begin a spate of mass evictions to sell their property, thus adding to the housing crisis.

But we really have to wake up around the reality of the situation where private landlords are concerned. They are landlords for a reason and it has nothing to do with housing the otherwise homeless.

They are landlords to make money, from tenants and from the increasing value of their property. It is an investment. I am not interested whether this is for a pension in later life or whatever. Everyone has to make such provision one way or another.

People need to remember two simple facts in the current situation: rents were never as high in Ireland and property is now approaching Celtic Tiger levels when it comes to sale. It is a major win, win situation for the private landlord, so many of whom are rushing to sell now because the price is right.

That people/families end up on the side of the road as a result is to be accepted as collateral damage, they would have us believe, as the rights of property trump a human right to a roof over your head. It may be the law, but it is an outrage. It was an outrage in 19th century Ireland and it is no less so today.

There should be no special pleading or sentimentality shown towards private landlords. They are in business and should be treated accordingly.

Indeed, where the current rental market is concerned they are allowed rights denied those larger corporations/pension funds who build-to-rent. These build-to-rent bodies have attracted the predicable ire from predictable quarters on ideological grounds but, de facto, they have far less rights that do private landlords.

For instance who has every heard of any of these bodies evicting a tenant because they want to sell the home, want it “for personal or family use” or because they’ve decided that “the use of the property is changing” – all accepted grounds for a private landlord to evict a tenant.

In other words, in the current situation, tenants have far more security when dealing with these larger build-to-rent bodies than they ever have with private landlords. Yet, it is the private landlords who are cossetted, not the build-to-rent bodies, and most certainly not the tenants.

With our history we should be ashamed that it has been allowed come to this. For Fianna Fail it might also explain why that party is in the sorry state it is today, with its fading identity propelling it to seriously consider propping up a Sinn Fein-led Government after the next general election because the alternative is oblivion in Opposition.

This is the party which once styled itself as representing 'the people of no property'. These days it loses a Minister because, it seems, he is unable to remember significant details of his many properties. It will also be remembered for comments of another of its former Ministers on the Late Late Show in 1999 where Padraig Flynn, then EU Commissioner for Social Affairs, told Gay Byrne of the difficulties in keeping three homes and their staffs running on his mere six figure salary.

And there was of course the lavish lifestyle of Fianna Fail Taoiseach Charles Haughey with his Gandon mansion in Kinsealy, his island off Kerry and his Celtic Mist yacht, all paid for – as we now know - by the estimated €10 million+ he accepted in backhanders from those-he-would-oblige and as established by the Moriarty tribunal.

Fianna Fail has long since left the people of no property behind which goes some way to explaining its predicament today. And, frankly, its last-throw-of-the-dice future will be determined to a great extent by how the current Housing Minister, Fianna Fail’s Darragh O’Brien, succeeds or otherwise in addressing the housing crisis between now and the next general by March 2025.

One thing he and his Government colleagues might do is reflect back on the various Land Acts which, under the British in the late 19th and early 20th century, made it possible for the people of Ireland to buy the land of Ireland from landlords.

The British State did so by extending low interest loans, with repayments spread to upwards of 50 years, to the people who wanted to buy the land. So successful was this that, though in 1870 only 3% of Irish people owned their own land, while 97% were tenants, by 1929 this had reversed with 97.4% holding their farms in freehold.

Why shouldn’t the Government introduce a similar scheme with lengthy repayments periods to allow people buy/build their own homes? It will be argued this would interfere with the market and particularly the banks, to which my response is so offensive I won’t write it down here.

As illustrated again as recently as AIB’s plans to close down ATM machines all over the country, or any time you might call yourself into any bank branch anywhere these days, the banks have no interest in us and couldn’t care less about our welfare.

Therefore we should behave accordingly towards them, in the interests of our people but particularly the homeless and the young who cannot afford a home.