Cork Workers’ Party Councillor Ted Tynan has strongly condemned a demand from the newly created National Assets Management Agency for changes in the law which would dilute the rights of long term tenants living in properties which are taken into NAMA’s ownership.

Cllr. Tynan was reacting to a report in this morning’s Irish Examiner in which an unnamed government spokesman is quoted as calling for changes to the Landlord & Tenant (Amendment) Act 1980 which gives long term tenants the right to extend their leases for up to 35 years.

The Workers’ Party councillor said that the present protections and rights available to tenants had been hard fought for and won after many decades of struggle and campaigning by tenants organisations and should not be lightly taken away.  He also expressed concern that if these rights could be waived on behalf of NAMA, then there would be demands by landlords for them to be taken away altogether.

“The struggle for fixity of tenure is something which has been fought for as far back as the Land War of the 1880s though Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell and right through to the more recent campaigns of the Housing Action Committees of the 1960s.  The economic crisis which has been caused by banks and property speculators, who make up a fair percentage of the landlords in this country, is no excuse for diluting tenants rights”, said Cllr. Tynan.

“I am calling on all public representatives to vigorously oppose any watering down of tenant’s rights at the behest of NAMA, builders or the financial institutions”, said Cllr. Tynan.

Issued 13th August 2009