Nearly 5,000 Notices of Termination were issued to tenants between July and September, new figures from the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) have shown.
The Government is now facing a tsunami of evictions in the coming months after the eviction ban ends on March 31.
Figures from the RTB show 4,741 Notices of Termination were issued between July and September of last year.
READ MORE: Irish grandmother facing homelessness this month after lifting of eviction ban
This compares with 1,132 eviction notices from January to March and 1,666 from April to June last year.
Some 2,845 landlords told their tenants that they intended to sell the property. In 794 cases, the landlord of their family wanted to move back in.
Some 738 notices were issued due to tenants breaching obligations.
Nearly 40% (1,839) of the notices to quit were given to households in Dublin. Some 500 notices were issued in Cork, while there were 286 in Galway.
The figures relate to Notices to Quit issued between July and September 2022.
The Government banned evictions between October 30 and March 31. If a person had received a notice to quit before the ban was introduced and their eviction date fell within this period, they were allowed to stay in their property for longer.
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin said the “scale of homelessness risk from April 1st is much worse than expected”.
He explained: “Notices issued from July to September would have, in many cases, fallen due from February during the ban period. A huge number of these notices will now fall due in April.
“This will mean more people than ever before will have to leave their rental homes.
“There is simply no way that homeless services will be able to cope with this level of need.
“The consequence will be thousands of people forced to stay with family and friends or overhold in their rental accommodation. It will also see a rise in rough sleeping and the prospect of families with children being referred to Garda stations for a safe place to sleep.
“These numbers are a direct consequence of government failure.”
Deputy Ó Broin called for the eviction ban to be extended.
Speaking on Friday, the Taoiseach expressed full confidence in Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien saying that he has “one of the hardest jobs in Government”.
Mr Varadkar said: “We have a housing crisis for particular reasons. We’ve a rapidly growing population, more single people, more marital breakdown, more households are being formed every year for lots of different reasons.
“We also had prolonged periods when the banks, the economy and the construction industry crashed, when we just didn't have enough houses built for the best part of eight years.
“That has left a very big deficit and it's going to take time, a lot of time, no matter who the Minister is and no matter who's in government to close that deficit.”
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