‘This will be devastating for many people’: Sligo-Leitrim TD calls out housing bill ahead of vote

On Wednesday night, the Dáil will vote on a bill which could introduce significant changes to the rental market and huge increases in rents in Leitrim.

The Residential Tenancies Bill, which will be debated and voted upon on Wednesday before it goes to the Seanad, would allow landlords to reset rent to the market rate when their properties become vacant from the 1st of March.

The government has said the Bill, which will be debated for five hours in the Dáil, is part of an effort to attract investment into the housing market.

Sligo Leitrim TD Martin Kenny says the government’s actions “are ensuring that the way forward is to make rents more unaffordable for more people.”

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He highlights the difficulty of finding a property in the Leitrim region, stressing that this move will make it worse.

“For many people, that will see an increase of rents of up to two, to three, to four hundred euros. This will be devastating for many people,” he said on Instagram.

“This is going to cause a huge problems and huge stress for very many people out there, what we need is a freeze on rent and to ensure that people get good quality properties at a reasonable rent that they can afford so that they can afford to save to buy a property into the future but for very many people they have been locked out of the housing market to buy anything and now they are going to see their rents increased through the roof.”

“We have had many, many people coming into our offices in the past couple of months with tenancy notices where they have to leave their property very soon. We believe the main reason for that is because this bill is coming down the tracks and some unscrupulous landlords are using it as an opportunity to push rents through the roof,” said Kenny.

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The bill does not affect existing Leases and adds additional security to leases with a minimum tenure of at least six years.

Smaller landlords, defined as having three or fewer tenancies, will also be allowed to terminate a lease before the end of six years if the landlord needs to sell due to financial or other hardship, or if they or a family member needs the property.

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