Tenants face eviction over repossessions

THOUSANDS of tenants face possibly illegal eviction as landlords who bought properties on the buy-to-let market at the height of the boom default on mortgages, the national housing agency Threshold has warned.

Threshold has seen a steep rise in the number of clients seeking help as a growing number of landlords are forced into receivership.

The charity is concerned that many of the 500,000 people in the private rental sector could be the victims of a new wave of repossessions, as receivers handling repossessed properties for the banks throw out tenants with little or no notice.

“In the last year there’s been a huge increase in these cases and we expect to see more in terms of dealing with receivers,” says Kevin Baneham, Threshold’s legal officer.

As the law stands, The Residential Tenancies Act (2004) offers security of tenure to tenants for up to four years once they have lived in a property in excess of six months. So long as tenants comply with the terms of the tenancy, the grounds for termination of a lease are very limited. A valid Notice of Termination must give long-term tenants up to 112 days’ notice to vacate a property.

The Private Tenancies Residential Board, a resolution service for disputes between tenants and landlords, wrote to the Irish Banking Federation in June 2009 to remind repossessing banks of the rights of tenants under the Residential Tenancies Act.

But Threshold has witnessed a growing number of cases before the courts where tenants’ legal protections under the Residential Tenancies Act have been flagrantly ignored.

Threshold has called on the Government to introduce amendments to the act to ensure protection of tenants’ rights in these cases, and to make explicit the legal position of tenants when landlords default.