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MINISTER FOR HOUSING Eoghan Murphy has said that he’s considering measures to clamp down on those who rent out substandard accommodation to tenants – measures which include jail time and “very large fines”.
It follows an RTÉ Prime Time exposé that showed dangerously overcrowded accommodation in sub-standard buildings with multiple fire safety breaches over a six-month period.
“We’re not talking about landlords here,” Murphy told RTE’s Today with Sean O’Rourke. “The majority of landlords are doing a very good job. We’re talking about criminals who are abusing people’s human rights.”
When asked whether jail time would be included as part of the penalties faced by non-compliant ‘landlords’, Murphy answered, “I don’t see why not”.
“If someone is in breach of the law, if someone is abusing people’s human rights to such an extent as we saw on that [RTÉ Prime Time programme, Nightmare to Let].”
He said that he would also consider barring people who have been in breach of minimum living standards from being a landlord, saying that these are people who are “subverting the law to make a profit over other people’s wellbeing and we can’t accept that”.
At the moment, there isn’t sufficient deterrent at all.
There’s legislation in place where a landlord hasn’t registered with the RTB that they are non-compliant with the relevant standards and when they are caught, we can move immediately to criminal and other proceedings and sanctions and very large fines.
Promises and bedsits
Murphy said that his Department has ring-fenced funding for increased inspections for rented accommodation, and are considering implementing new guidelines on the standard of living.
He also said that he’s still considering bringing back bedsits if it succeeds in freeing up new homes for people, but that controversial issue is still under review.
He also defended the government’s response to the homeless and housing crisis, saying:
“Next year we will almost double the number of social houses that are being built by the State to about 3,800 but when you add in the number of vacant social housing homes that are being moved back into use, the number of homes that will be acquired as social housing homes and the number of homes that will be long-term leased, it will be about 7,900.
That’s almost 8,000 homes, which I think is a good measure of progress given that a few years ago it was almost nothing.
Murphy claimed that the current homeless figures of 8,374 people, with over 3,000 children among that number, had already begun to decline.
In Dublin in September we saw for two months in a row and this is the first time that this has happened in three years, more families exited emergency accommodation than entered.
He said that the work that the government has been doing for a number of years “is starting to show results” and cited a 50% increase in planning permissions and construction commencement notices each year.
“What that tells us about next year is that… there is going to be a significant ramping up in the number of homes being built and any new home whether it’s for a student, elderly person, a new family will take pressure off other parts of the system.”
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How about jail time for the damage tenants do or at the very least have them pay outstanding rent and costs? It can take over a year to evict a nonpaying tenant even if they are physically tearing up the building in front of you.
The laws need to be balanced out.
And so we see how this FF/FG coalition will limp along from one scandal to the other to get to the Christmas break, that will take them up to February and Patricks day break, no decisions or action taken.
Jail time for slum landlords, also a must that tenants who wreck people’s property must pay for full repairs after they leave. It works both ways not a one way system.
@Mick12: jailing hooligan tenants, are you mad lad…… think of the complete logic and fairness that would be! At present tenant rules a house he/ she don’t own, landlords have justify why they want to do.
@Mick12: Why would you Jail an absentee landlord when a subletting human trafficker is responsible for not reporting the deterioration of the building and overloading it with immigrants.
How about an adequate supply of actually affordable housing to eliminate all demand for substandard housing.
The next election must be fought solely on the housing crisis; our 3rd World health system and wealth redistribution.
Capitalism has failed Ireland.
@Colin Morris: now now Colin, we can’t be having that kinda of talk around here, the fraperoom can’t leave early on Friday
@Colin Morris: because not all the tax payers in this country want their tax money spent on free housing.
What about the government providing tax breaks for landlords to renovate. Is that not the fastest and simplest solution.
Also as housing is a humanitarian emergency in Ireland, landlord TDs must be banned from office due to conflict of interest until the humanitarian crisis is resolved.
@Colin Morris: What sort of conflict of interests arise from this?
@Pat Bateman: The ones that only make sense in his head.
@Honeybadger197: no matter what the story is on the journal, someone will start crying about the Guards, TDs, The Banks, or more recently Bono and Ibrahim. The same tripe repeated over and over. If a someone is a landlord and a TD, that’s absolutely fine
@Colin Morris: good suggestion, currently 30% of TDs as landlords have zero interest in seeing housing as homes rather than investment opportunities.
@Colin Morris: any chance of you letting me know what td is a landlord, so I can happily avoid giving them more of my hard earnd money.
Blue shirts gonna punish white collar crime . I don’t think so
The current rent and house prices are a violation of human rights..
Jail would be too luxurious for the rogue landlords. Force them to live in their own substandard accommodation.
A shop may give you bad experience you can’t walk out with a load of shopping. There needs to be equal laws if a landlord dose not provide repair in a reasonable time frame, you get a discount on the next month’s rent, if you don’t pay on time without notice you forfeit your right to normal lease termination times. If fail to leave there be a register were landlords / tenants are put on, and payment can be taken for eithers benefits or income.
Government and in particular the minister for bull knew about these lettings before prime time program. Give us a rest from the waffle and be pro active.
FG view is if you’re a minion or a pleb, jail time applies. (ie: not a politician or a banker).
FG have their separate laws for us and for them. This morning Leo enlightened the minions with a picture of him putting something in a dishwasher. I feel so honoured to have witnessed a moment of our great leaders daily life!
Also today, one of his colleagues said the tv licence fee was “banjaxed”, lots of people weren’t paying because they had the internet and were watching Netflix instead. The gov were losing 10s of millions yearly as a result. Horrendous! His solution was to introduce a license fee to include internet and Netflix. Thats the solution! Just tax it, just tax everything!!!!
They’re gonna tax us for watching Netflix, tax us for using the internet, for using facebook, or using google, or for tweeting. It’s stupid. And it’s probably the only solution these incompetent money hungry useless politicians can come up with.
@Adrian: last year fg were looking to change the license fee to cover the rate player, until it was pointed out to them that the were taxing the internet.
@Adrian: he doesn’t have to introduce a licence fee – he already has one. Any machine capable of receiving tv stations are liable to be licenced.
Please, we don’t lock up rapists, murderers, or people with 100′s of convictions.hardly going to jail a dodgy landlord.
But not for Banker perpetrating Fraud ?!
This gang of clowns have lost the plot, pure desperation by ministers trying to get their bills passed and accepted by the public. Muppets the lot of them.
As I was having my bowl of Cheerios in my heated conservatory this morning, I thought about how landlords who rent out accommodation which isn’t fit for human habitation should get the electric chair
Council houses are sub standard so the Government will be going to jail too.
How about a house swap? Tenants get to live rent free in the landlord’s gaff while he’s stuck in the death trap slum he’s charging 1500 a month for.
The rapists & murderers barely get a jail sentence in Ireland…
IF this guy had a brain he would be dangerous ,anything for a headline ,it must be leo s private pr crew giving him some tips ,how to make an idiot out of yourself .they couldnt even lock up we seannie for all his sins, and what about the banksters .gombeen
the poor have always been stuffed into over crowed accomadation,it was the same back in 2000
A lot of human hating going on in these comments. Everybody deserves a roof over their head and to be charged a reasonable price. And if you are a good tenant you should be allowed to live there as long as need. The rental society in this country is all about the landlords and not enough about the tenants. If you abuse your lease then you lose your flat. If you abuse your tenants then you should be fined and struck off from being a landlord for a time equal to the crime.
All those vulture funders treathened with jail
Back in 2007 the reason why people were forced to rent and couldn’t buy property was because it was all being bought up by landlords / property investors who were pushing up the prices. This was the prevailing logic at the time.
Now landlords aren’t buying property and many are exiting the unprofitable sector so following that same logic backwards this should mean that renters can all afford to buy their own homes.
Why has no one posted a comment on the many landlords who have taken a financial loss in order to assist tenants going through difficult health, personal, or financial situations? Many landlords in Ireland have just one or two houses and they may have some of their own family members in distress. Therefore these landlords often have undetstanding and empathy for the hardships of the tenant. Please bring some balance into the discussion.
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