Renting / Letting in Ireland

 

The Irish Property Owners' Association - IPOA

The Irish Property Owners' Association seeks to protect and promote the interests of private residential landlords and encourage the supply of good quality accommodation and professional standards of management.

It was founded in 1993 in response to the then Government’s introduction of extensive regulations governing the private rented service industry.

The IPOA is the national association representing the providers of private rented accommodation and with a membership base of approx. 5,000 and growing, we represent the needs and interests of a significant number of Irish property owners.

The IPOA is instrumental in ensuring that the rented service industry becomes more responsive to housing needs and capable of offering real choices and good quality properties at an affordable price to all tenant-customers.

In the Irish Times property section on the 27th November their property correspondent Edel Morgan reported on the "Opposition to improving bedsits being OTT on many fronts"

This followed the IPOA'S Press Release of the 20th November 2008 (below)

A Step Too Far - Banning Bedsits Press Release

Minister Gormley has not gone for the Lamp Post this time he's in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Imagine a Minister for Environment proceeding with Legislation to ban bed sits in the Private Rented Sector!

Currently there are 9000 units which house some 15000 people, in affordable comfortable accommodation, why, because these units are not self contained they have to share bathroom facilities. How grand we are getting?

Does this mean that when we go into hospital that we get a separate bathroom? Does it mean when some of the people who currently live in these bedsits will get a separate bathroom in their Hostel Accommodation or worse still on the side of the street when they become homeless as many of them will.

Minister, come down to earth and insist on the current Minimum Standards being implemented by Local Authorities, who since 1996 have failed totally in their responsibility to have the necessary standards implemented.

Spend the 10 million plus currently in hand in the PRTB and Local Authority offices, on a meaningful effort to stamp out non compliance with the 1993 Housing Standards.

1. Homelessness in mass proportions
2. Unnecessary costs to have needless alterations to existing comfortable accommodation
3. Seriously deplete the stock of long term affordable accommodation

Your home is your Castle!

Stephen Faughnan (Chairman) Irish Property Owners Association Ashtown Business Centre, Navan Road, Dublin 15.

The Irish Times went to explain that Environment Minister John Gormley is planning to introduce new laws to ban the traditional bedsit, as part of a series of measures which his department believes will improve standards of living for people in the rented accommodation sector.

The new bill will spell the end for the conventional bedsit meaning residents from neighbouring bedsits will no longer be allowed to share a communal bathroom. The four-year run-in programme, to be introduced on February 1, 2009, will also require landlords to improve heat, lighting and fire safety.

The new standards require - apart from a separate bathroom - is that basics like an oven, fridge, freezer, sink with draining area and microwave are supplied, that rooms have adequate heating and ventilation, washing facilities and vermin-free refuse storage, as well as smoke alarms and fire blankets. There will also be an end to open fireplaces as the sole means of room heating

When the announcement was made, Environment Minister John Gormley said the new regulations would lead to improved living conditions for those in rented accommodation: “It will effectively mean the end of the bedsit. We will no longer have the situation where people have to live in property where you don't have access to a shower or proper sanitary conditions.”

The legislation is currently proceeding through the Dail and Seanad and some provisions will come into force as early as February 2009

Irish Property Owners' Association Website