Government must reinstate eviction ban, Kildare TD says

A Kildare-based TD has called on the government to reinstate the eviction ban.

Sinn Féin TD Réada Cronin explained in a statement that the government must reintroduce the ban on evictions after the Residential Tenancies Board Quarter 4 (Q4) figures showed that an additional 157 notices to quit were issued in County Kildare for the last three months of 2022.

"This is on top of the increased 219 notices issued in Q3, while there are pitifully-few properties available to rent," she said.

Ms Cronin elaborated: "These are not statistics; every notice to quit can involve multiple people, including children, the elderly, women about to give birth or who have new babies and people struggling with their health. 

"These are workers, carers, pensioners, families caught up in the government’s obsession with private profit over public services, because they have given up the sense of housing being a public need and good.

"We have a huge increase in people contacting my office, some in acute physical and psychological distress because they know they have nowhere to go except into emergency accommodation, if they are lucky.

Réada Cronin TD. File Pic.

She continued: "Others are workers in good jobs who know there is nothing they can rent and will be forced to move back in with parents, again if they are lucky, and become part of the hidden homeless, something they never imagined... the government is robbing workers of their right an independent life, a private life that is the expectation and need of adult life.

"It is robbing workers of their personal future though it depends on them to go to work and pay their taxes. This is extreme disregard and disrespect."

Ms Cronin added that while some people facing eviction will find private rental accommodation, 'most will not.'

"The result will be a wave of sofa surfing and mortified, frightened people looking for floor-space from friends and family, with a rise in single men and women looking for emergency accommodation," she said: "Kildare County Council’s emergency accommodation system will simply not be able to cope with any significant increase in homeless presentations.

"Many people will be forced to overhold and in some cases to sleep rough and in their cars, and people are already scoping out places they can find some privacy and relative safety. 

"In a deep and worsening housing crisis, the government's decision to end the ban on no-fault evictions was cruel, callous and wrong."

She concluded her statement by saying that the government must now 'implement an emergency package to prevent homelessness, accelerate exits from emergency accommodation, and increase and speed-up the delivery of the social and affordable homes that people deserve, need and are desperate for.'