May we have order for Deputy Boyd Barrett, please?

This morning I brought three different groups of tenants into the Public Gallery before addressing a question to the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Murphy. All three groups face evictions by ruthless vulture funds that have absolutely no concern for their welfare but seek to evict them in order to drive up the value of the property assets they have purchased. More than 100 individuals and families, some in Inchicore, some in Dublin 6, the Minister's own constituency, and some in my constituency, Dún Laoghaire, face evictions at the hands of these vulture funds. All the funds are using loopholes in the residential tenancies legislation in order to justify or execute these attempted evictions, loopholes which we in the Opposition have repeatedly pointed out would be and are being used by vulture funds to evict people. The loopholes relate to substantial refurbishment of property and sale of property. The latest case concerns the Dún Laoghaire residents, who face the fourth separate effort by two different vulture funds to have them evicted in the past two years. This time they think it will succeed because they have found another loophole to get around the so-called Tyrrelstown amendment, which restricts mass evictions in cases of ten or more tenants. What do these vulture funds do? They evict eight of the 11 tenants and then, in nine months' time, they can evict the other three. There used to be 21 tenants in the properties affected, but slowly the vulture funds have whittled their numbers down through insecurity, fear and anxiety. The numbers go down as the vulture funds try to get them all out. Now 50 families on Richmond Street and Grove Park, in Dublin 6, face the same, as do residents of three blocks of apartments, Emmet Manor, Emmet Court and Emmet Lodge, in Inchicore.

I asked the Minister for Housing what he would do to stop these ruthless, inhuman vulture funds - that is what they are. Let us be clear about what is at stake. They are trying to do one thing and one thing only: make people homeless to drive up the value of the assets and make profit. They do not want to be landlords and they do not care about the tenants or the kids. They just want to drive up the value of the assets. What will the Government do about this? We have put before the Government Bills to amend the Constitution to enshrine the right to housing and we have seen the House pass the Solidarity-People Before Profit anti-evictions Bill, which the Government blocks, to prevent evictions in these kinds of cases, but still the Government does nothing. It is protecting these vultures and giving them tax breaks. Michael Noonan invited them in in 2013 with a whole series of meetings and they are ruthlessly exploiting the housing crisis and inflicting misery on hundreds of families. What will the Taoiseach do?

I think the Deputy may be conflating evictions with notices to quit. Of course, they are not the same thing-----

I said "attempted evictions".

-----and it is wrong to conflate the two. Eviction rates in Ireland are probably among the lowest in the western world. Leaving that aside, a crucial part of the Government's housing policy has been to enhance and strengthen the rights of tenants. We did so by introducing rent controls. Hundreds of thousands of people renting across the country who might have faced very high rent increases in recent years have had rent increases of between 0% and 4% instead. That has brought a lot of relief to people who are renting. There are also longer notice-to-quit periods such that if somebody is asked by the owner to leave a property, he or she is given much more time to find an alternative place to rent, and that has really helped people too. As for notices to quit linked to refurbishments, it is now a requirement that the landlord offers the refurbished house or apartment to the tenant after the refurbishment takes place, which I think will make a difference too.

The Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, has confirmed that a number of cases related to the specific matters the Deputy raised have now been referred to its independent dispute resolution process, and that is ongoing. The RTB replaces the courts in the majority of lanlord-tenant disputes, and it is important that all parties be afforded due process and that their cases be heard in order to ensure that the dispute resolution system is legally robust. We strongly encourage any tenant to contact the RTB to access a dispute resolution service if an issue arises. As of 1 July of this year, the RTB has new powers of investigation and can sanction improper conduct by landlords, including any non-compliance with tenancy termination provisions.

Rent increases of 4% per year on top of already unaffordable rents are not doing much to control rents. They are completely out of control and beyond the vast majority of workers' ability to pay. The failure of all the measures the Taoiseach cited to address the threat of vulture funds trying to evict people is very evident in the case of St. Helen's Court, Dún Laoghaire, as I mentioned. Two different vulture funds - one flipped the property to the other - have attempted four times to try to evict the people living there. When they keep doing this it has an attrition effect and it is absolutely clear that the people behind these funds have no interest in having tenants. They have succeeded. In that block there are now ten empty units sitting there. The Government should instruct Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to use compulsory purchase powers to take over those units. Otherwise, the vulture funds will eventually drive the tenants out, as they have already driven out ten. More to the point, the Government should close the loopholes in the law that allow these vulture funds to do this continually, but the Government is not doing so. The vulture funds find new loopholes because the Government still allows sale or refurbishment as grounds for attempted eviction. Another way around this is that they refurbish the property but change its fundamental character such that they cannot offer it back to the tenant because it is a different type of property. That is what they are doing.

I ask in the first instance that the Taoiseach gets the Minister to intervene to ensure that the local authorities-----

The Deputy's time is up.

-----secure those properties to prevent the eviction, change the loopholes in order that one cannot evict on the grounds of sale, close down the other loopholes and introduce a constitutional right to housing.

I thank the Deputy. His time is up.

That is how we will address these vulture funds treating tenants in this way.

Regarding the rent caps, rent increases are set at a maximum of 4%. That has given hundreds of thousands of people already renting a house or an apartment a degree of certainty about their rent. However, it has a knock-on effect, in some cases a negative one, on people who need to move or people who are renting for the first time. That is the downside to rent controls. However, it gives people who are in existing tenancies, who are renting apartments and houses, a degree of certainty they never had before. The Deputy mentioned landlords attempting to evict tenants.

I do not know the exact details of the case the Deputy mentioned. Since he stated that there was an attempt to evict, I assume it was unsuccessful. This would indicate that the law was on the side of the tenants and was successfully upheld.

Ten of them are gone.

The Deputy proposes preventing homeowners, property owners and landlords from selling the apartments or houses they own. We think that is too onerous. If a person owns an apartment or a house and it has been rented out for a period, he or she may need to sell it. He or she may need to pay off debts or emigrate.

Sell the properties with the tenant.

We have extended the period of notice that has to be given to tenants. They have much more time than they had before to find alternative properties.