Tenants’ rights stronger than ever
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The way in which Irish people live in their homes has undergone enormous change over the past couple of decades.
Home ownership used to be the standard and the majority of people here (currently around 70%) still own the homes they live in. Back in the 1980s and into the early 1990s, Irish people had one of the highest home-ownership rates in Europe (over 80%).
It was a time when the notion of living in a home you didn’t own was, for a sizeable majority of the population, seen as a very short-term measure — something one only did in one’s student years, perhaps, or for a few years at best before moving into a home of your own. In contrast, most people in the other member states of the EU lived their entire lives as tenants.
Today, for better or worse, the situation has been upended, with home ownership rates in the former East European states being amongst the highest in the EU, while we found ourselves in a situation where an increasing percentage of Irish people are renting rather than owning their own homes. Our home ownership rates are now lower than those of countries such as Belgium or Spain — a reversal of the situation in the early 1990s.
The positive news about this, however, is that as the share of those living in rented accommodation has increased, so too have the rights of tenants. One of the factors constantly pushing people to buy their own homes back in the day and move out of rented accommodation was the lack of tenure and the lack of security. Today, tenants have a huge degree of security in their leases, to a point that would appeared like a fantasy world just a few decades ago.
The establishment of the RTB (Residential Tenancies Board) in the mid-2000s was an enormous step in establishing a firm platform for bringing the rights and security of tenants up to modern European standards in this country. Its stated aim at the time was to “move towards the situation where long-term tenancies are the norm.”
It was about changing perspectives along the way. The very notion of a long-term tenancy is a case in point. Up until 2016, a six-year tenancy was officially a long-term tenancy, which brought with it a certain standard of security of tenure for the tenant. Since then, that period is four years, giving those with a shorter lease a greater amount of security in line with longer lease. The contract between landlord and tenant is now designed as a much more permanent arrangement for the long-term living and is more on par with the kind of secure tenancy that our European neighbours have enjoyed for several decades.
The evolution of this relationship continues, with new rules coming in every year to bolster tenants’ rights as well as upholding those of the property owners. The process of evicting tenants, for example, has become a far more complicated process than was the case heretofore.
Gone are the days when a landlord can suddenly decide they’ve had enough of housing a tenant and evicting them. It may not always work as planned and there are problems in certain cases where landlords may very well feel aggrieved at situations as they arise but it has been a very necessary development, with the focus shifting to security for tenants.
During the recent Covid pandemic, we saw emergency legislation come in to support tenants and not allow them to be evicted while their ability to pay their rent was directly affected by the Lockdown. As we emerge out of that era, protection for tenants continues.