Minister visiting Laois defends lifting rental eviction ban

A Fine Gael Minister visiting Laois has defended the lifting of the rental eviction.

With just two houses to rent in Portlaoise, a town of 24,000 people, on the day of Minister for Enterprise Simon Coveney’s visit to Laois on March 30,  the Leinster Express / Laois Live asked him if he is happy to stand over the lifting of the ban, effective from April 1.

Minister Coveney argues that removing the ban will stop landlords selling up.

“This is the point. We need to focus on supply of more houses. There is significant evidence that the ban on evictions has contributed to many landlords leaving the market, and many properties also leaving the rental market.

“We know that 21,000 landlords left the market last year, which is reducing the options for people who need rental properties. We have nearly 12,000 people in emergency accommodation today and 3,500 are children. We need to get more properties into the rental market so that those families have an option to get out of emergency accommodation and into rental properties. 

“If we know that extending an eviction ban is reducing the number of rental properties, then we have to do something about that," the Enterprise Minister said.

He claims it is now more difficult to evict a tenant.

“Of course people who face eviction need to be helped by the state. We have, over the last number of years, significantly improved the security of tenure of tenants. Landlords can’t easily evict anybody at the moment unless there are specific reasons.

“The focus has to be to get more rental properties into the market, to build more new homes, get more vacant properties into the market, to ensure that we have affordable rental, affordable homes for sale, more social housing. 

“We built 9,000 social houses last year which is more than at any time since 1975. We are delivering more houses but we’ve got to do more.

“I’m more than aware of the anxiety and concern, frustration and anger around the shortage of housing. The Government is determined to respond to that, but the core problem here is we simply don’t have enough houses available for rent in Portlaoise today. Unfortunately the judgement we’ve made, because of the statistics that don’t lie, is that extending the eviction ban contributes to more and more properties being taken out of the rental market," he said.

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Latest homeless figures for Laois meanwhile show seven families living in emergency accommodation, and 12 single people. The figures were given at the March 27 meeting of Laois County Council, relating to the end of February.

Since the start of 2023, 15 families in Laois had presented as homeless to the council desk, and 31 single people.