More than 4,000 notices to quit served in final quarter of 2022, figures show

More than 4,000 notices to quit were recorded in the final three months of 2022, new figures show, amid warnings of a “tsunami” of evictions due in the coming months.

As the government’s temporary winter eviction ban was lifted on Saturday, warnings were issued that homeless services could buckle under a spike in demand.

Quarterly-issued figures published on Monday by the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB) show that during October, November and December some 4,329 notices to quit were sent to tenants.

In 58% of cases, the reason given for issuing the notice to quit was because the landlord intends to sell the property, while a further 16% said that the landlord or a family member intends on moving into the property.

Almost half of the notices were issued in Dublin (43.2%), while 10.9% were issued in Cork, 6.7% in Galway and 4.7% in Limerick.

This compares with 4,741 notices to quit issued between July and September.

Since July 6 2022 landlords have been required to send a copy of notices of termination to the RTB on the same day that the notice is served on the tenant, otherwise the notice is invalid.

In the years previous, the requirement was to notify the RTB within 28 days of the termination date. As a result, it is difficult to compare eviction notice figures from the past two quarters with previous quarters (1,131 notices reported in Q1 and 1,666 in Q2 of 2022).

The RTB has also said that one eviction notice could relate to multiple tenants in a tenancy or separate notices could be received for each tenant in a dwelling.

Responding to the figures, the Irish Property Owners’ Association has called on the government “to work collaboratively” with private landlords to implement policies which encourage the retention of small landlords.

Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald called on the government to reverse its “awful, drastic decision” to lift the eviction ban at the end of March, despite record high homeless figures and supply issues.

The Dublin TD argued that the reason why more than half of landlords who issued notices to quit in Q4 could be selling their properties was “because property prices now are so high”.

“If you had an experience of becoming an accidental landlord, maybe experiencing negative equity for a long time, things have now shifted, they’re out of those circumstances and they wish to sell on their property,” she said on RTE’s Six One programme.

“So the issue now and the focus needs to be not so much on the landlords but on the State and the government – what is the government’s response?

“Because, let’s be clear, landlords didn’t create this crisis.

“Landlords, in the final analysis, don’t carry a responsibility to protect citizens, government does, so they need to intervene and they need to intervene quickly.”

Social Democrat TD Cian O’Callaghan said Ireland was facing “a tsunami” of thousands of evictions in the coming months.

“Thousands of people across the country are competing for a handful of available rental properties. This is causing immense stress to those who are facing into eviction with nowhere to go,” he said.