The minimum amount of notice a landlord must give a new tenant before evicting them is to increase from 28 days to three months, under new legislation passed by the Oireachtas.
The new legislation, which has yet to be signed into law by President Michael D Higgins, will extend notice periods landlords must provide to tenants, in the case of no-fault evictions where there has been no breach of tenant obligations.
The new law will extend the amount of notice landlords must provide to tenants who have been renting a property for less than three years.
Tenants in a home less than six months must be given 90 days rather than the current 28 days notice, under the new legislation.
The changes will see notice periods for tenants in a property between six months and a year increase from three to five months.
Tenants who have been in a rented property for more than a year but less than three years will be entitled to six rather than four months notice before an eviction.
The legislation also requires landlords to send copies of any eviction notices they issue tenants to the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), the State authority regulating the rental market. If a landlord fails to provide a copy of the eviction notice to the RTB the notice shall be deemed invalid.
Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said the new measures would give renters “more time to find alternative accommodation” if they were being evicted.
“This measure is being taken alongside a range of other measures in Housing for All to make renting more secure. The extension of these notice periods will give those in tenancies under three years greater security of tenure,” he said.
John-Mark McCafferty, chief executive of tenants’ rights charity Threshold, said the increased minimum notice periods would provide some “welcome breathing space” for tenants.
The extension of required notice landlords have to give tenants who were in a property less than six months, from 28 days to three months, was “pretty substantial,” he said.
Mr McCafferty said despite increased notice periods before tenants were evicted, the “key issue” in the housing crisis was the lack of supply of homes. “There simply isn’t the alternative housing to move into,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Irish Property Owners’ Association said letting a property in Ireland was increasingly challenging “due to the continuing changing regulatory regime”.
The landlord representative group said complex legislation was “excruciatingly difficult for property owners to navigate, resulting in an exodus of property owners and less available accommodation for tenants”.
The spokeswoman said Government policy should focus on retaining existing landlords in the market, as well as increasing the supply of housing.
