WHEN WE THINK of evictions in Ireland it is usually the battering ram knocking the door of a thatched cottage of tenant farmers in the famine from our primary schoolbooks. But today in Ireland there are, once more, tens of thousands of tenants being evicted from their homes. It’s not being done with battering rams but the silent issuing of notices of termination to renters by landlords.

The sheer scale of evictions is staggering. Nearly 15,000 notices of termination were issued to renters so far this year – a massive 35% increase annually. There are 1,600 eviction notices issued every month and 54 eviction notices issued every day. It is happening in every part of the country: 1,706 notices to quit were issued in Cork this year, 940 in Galway, 509 in Kildare, 412 in Meath and 356 in Wexford.

Each of these renters are individuals and families with their own story – their own trauma of being forced to leave their home. There are families being evicted with children whose rental property has been their only ‘home’. Parents are stressed and children are anxious about trying to find somewhere else to rent. Maybe in another part of the city, or a different town, where the kids will have to move school and lose friends – as well as losing their home and all the emotional connections and stability that gave them.

There are elderly pensioners who are being evicted and if they cannot afford anywhere else – they will be pushed into homelessness. There are young and middle-aged working people who face the stark choice when they receive the eviction notice of taking a step backwards in life – move back to a box room in their parent’s home; emigrate and leave the country; or to go into hidden homelessness – couch surfing.

What a complete and utter failure our country and the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael government is for these people right now.

The social contract for these renters has been ripped up.

These renters are teachers, nurses, care workers, builders, students, children, disabled, and elderly people – and yet the basic need for security, the fundamental need of a home, is being taken away from them. The Irish Republic is an empty promise for those being evicted from their home into homelessness.

For the vast majority of evictions, the renter has done nothing wrong. Instead, the landlord has decided to sell the property or states that they are renovating it or moving a family member in. These are ‘no-fault’ evictions, making up 89% of notices of termination. Indeed, there are cases of the landlord not selling the property but using the eviction to get in higher paying renters. There remains a lack of enforcement of laws around this.

On a human level I just cannot understand how there isn’t a bigger outcry over this tsunami of evictions and how the government can accept the scale of human suffering its policies are causing. At the Oireachtas Housing Committee last week, I asked the Minister for Housing – where are these people being evicted supposed to go to and what is the Government doing to intervene? His response was deeply disappointing, saying this is just part of a ‘transition’ to new rules coming in March next year. Ultimately, they say the answer is to increase supply. But they have been saying that for years and where is the new supply? The little rental accommodation coming on stream is investor-fund rentals at €3,000 a month or more that no one can afford. So where are people to go to?

These eviction notices have a massive impact on renters’ mental and physical health. Renters are living in a state of constant fear and anxiety. I met with a family in my constituency and the mother told me she hadn’t slept since being told to leave by the landlord. She welled up with tears as she told me she had tried all her life to provide a home for her kids but what is she to do now? This ongoing housing insecurity is a chronic and toxic stress, with major health implications.

It makes no financial sense for the Government not to intervene to prevent evictions into homelessness, as the State is already paying almost half a billion a year on private for-profit emergency accommodation.

The Minister for Housing, in a bizarre move, reduced funding for the very effective tenant-in-situ scheme where a local authority could purchase the property and keep the tenant in place, if they were at risk of imminent eviction.

The truth is the Government puts the private market and the property investment interests of landlord investors above the wellbeing of renters and their need for a home. The new rental measures being brought in next March will allow landlords rack up the rents even further. They will be able to reset rent to market rent for new tenancies, and every six years after that for those new tenancies.

The Government know their housing policies are causing thousands of people to be evicted into homelessness. Yet they are turning a blind eye to it. Housing is a fundamental human right, and central to that right is security of tenure and protection from eviction. The Irish Government committed in the Lisbon Declaration on Combatting Homelessness in 2021 that “evictions should be prevented whenever possible and no one is evicted without assistance for an appropriate housing solution”.

They are clearly breaching that commitment.

In many European countries such as Finland, Belgium, France and Germany, tenants are protected from eviction when a landlord is selling, and evictions are not allowed if the tenant cannot find somewhere else. Landlords are also required to provide a number of months’ rent to tenants if evicting them, while there are hardship funds for renters in arrears to prevent evictions. In Switzerland, renters can request an extension of up to four years if their eviction would result in unjustifiable hardship. In Belgium, a ‘social clause’ means that if a tenant is in difficult circumstances, including serious illness, old age, the death of a next of kin, and pregnancy, there is a right to extend the tenancy contract.

Why can’t Irish renters have such protections? Why doesn’t the Minister for Housing introduce a hardship clause that bans evictions for up to three years?

It was done during Covid and it worked. Why can’t it be done again?

Renters are paying their rent on time, doing nothing wrong, and yet they are being evicted from their home at numbers we have not seen since famine times. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Housing must immediately implement a ban on no-fault evictions and ensure there are no evictions into homelessness. This is a human catastrophe that no Irish Government should be just accepting as normal.

• Rory Hearne is a Social Democrats TD for Dublin North-West and is the party’s spokesperson on housing. He is the author of ‘Gaffs – why no one can get a house… and what we can do about it’.