Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien’s officials knew about the tsunami of eviction notices coming down the tracks before the Government decided to lift the evictions ban in March
A major political row has erupted after it emerged that the figures showing that 9,000 official NoTs (Notices to Quit) were in the system in the second half of 2022 and available for the Government’s leaders if they looked for them.
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman, Eoin O Broin, said that he found it hard to believe the Government ministers didn’t have the figures if their officials had them.
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And Labour’s Ivana Bacik said that if the figures were made available before the Dáuil vote on the ban it would have made a big difference.
Mr O’Brien has insisted he was never informed of the figures by his officials, who knew about the numbers for Q3 and Q4 in January and February.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar that they had “indications” that eviction numbers would spike, but that the decision was taken to end the ban after considering many factors.
And Tánaiste Micheál Martin tried to distance himself and the rest of the Government leadership from the controversy by saying they had only been given preliminary info and that it was "outrageous" to suggest otherwise.
Mr Martin said that they did not have the Q4 figures which showed over 4,300 eviction notices were issued in October,November and December.
This was on top of more than 4,700 issued already in the third quarter of the year.
The Taoiseach said: “What I want to make very, very clear, there will be people who will try and create a false impression that if we had had these exact numbers, that we would have made different decisions.
“That's absolutely not the case.
“One of the [reasons] why we decided not to extend the eviction was precisely because there was an acceleration of landlords leaving the market, the numbers of Notices to Quit were increasing.”
Mr O Broin said: “The Department of Housing received this information on January 19th and February 7th - a full month before the government decided to end the ban on no-fault evictions on March 7th.
“Minister O’Brien must clarify whether he and his cabinet colleagues had this information when making a decision on the ending of the ban.
“It is hard to imagine any set of circumstances where Department of Housing Officials would not have shared this information with the Minister in advance of such a significant decision.
“If it transpires that Minister O’Brien and his cabinet colleagues had this information and chose to ignore its implications, it makes their decision to end the ban on no-fault evictions even more callous.”
Ms Bacik said: “The political decision to lift the eviction ban was apparently made by the government without any evidence basis.
“There are now questions as to whether political pressure was applied to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) to delay the release of Q4 figures from 2022 on notices to quit received by renters.
“Had this information been publicly released last week, as had been expected, there is no doubt that it would have changed the tone of Oireachtas debates on the eviction ban.”
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