A "tsunami of misery" is coming down the road as thousands of people face eviction with nowhere to go, housing campaigner Peter McVerry has warned.
"We're talking tens of thousands of people who are going to be pulled out of their homes at a time when emergency homeless accommodation is absolutely packed," Father McVerry warned.
He said emergency accommodation is nearly full to capacity, while hotel accommodation is also unavailable.
He told RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne that a drip feed of heart-wrenching stories will make their way into the media in the coming months.
"This is the worst decision that this Government has taken in its lifetime and it's going to cause untold misery," Fr McVerry said.
He said he cannot produce the evidence to prove the Taoiseach overruled Minister for Housing Darragh O'Brien, who wanted to extend the eviction ban, but Fr McVerry said he stood by his story and said he cannot reveal his sources.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has denied this happened.
"That claim is 100% untrue and there is zero evidence to support it," he said.
Mr Varadkar said the minister put three options before the coalition leaders and he recommended option one.
"Which was that we should not continue with the temporary winter eviction ban, for reasons he's explained," the Taoiseach said.
"So that's the absolute 100% truth of this."
Fr McVerry described the 'spat' as a distraction from the greater issue of the eviction ban and homelessness crisis.
He said he has supported Mr O'Brien but that his targets are not ambitious enough and the pace of delivery is too slow.
Father McVerry said the Government Tenant in Situ scheme is ringfenced with a lot of conditions and that he has already heard of one council that refused to purchase a home because the house had three bedrooms and the family in need only needed two bedrooms.
"This is not the time for ticking boxes," he said.
"This is a crisis, unlike any other crisis we have seen for a long time and we require everybody to come together and treat it like a crisis," Fr McVerry added.
O'Gorman defends Govt measures
The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth defended the measures put in place to assist people being evicted from a property that is being put up for sale.
Roderic O'Gorman said "the key thing" from the figures released by the Residential Tenancies Board yesterday is "that a very large number" of tenancies terminated in the final three months of last year was due to a landlord's intention to sell the rental property.
He said "that was one of the key things the Government had in mind in terms of the safety net we've introduced" where a renter is receiving eviction notice due to reason of sale.
Speaking at an event in Croke Park, the minister said: "They have the opportunity to purchase the house, but, more particularly if that doesn't work out, they have the opportunity for an approved housing body or a local authority to purchase their house with a tenant in situ and rent it back at a cost rental.
"So, I think that's an important safety net for that very large category of households."
Asked if he had ever seen or heard anything to suggest the claim by Fr McVerry that the Taoiseach overruled the Minister O’Brien, Minister O’Gorman said: "no, I hadn’t".
'Notices to quit could impact up to 30,000' - Threshold
The CEO of Threshold, which advocates on behalf of renters, said 9,000 notices of terminations, issued in the last few months of 2022, could affect up to 30,000 people.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, John Mark McCafferty explained that the notices affect households that could be made up of families, some intergenerational and individuals.
Mr McCafferty said this is a very challenging and unprecedented time and that Threshold services are spending more time validating termination notices than ever before.
He said it is very important that renters know they have rights and protections and they do not just accept a notice at face value.
He said: "We are in the business of advising people, saving tenancies and fighting to protect tenancies and in this unprecedented time, we are spending more of our time, our advisors are spending most of their energy on validating tenancies terminations."
Mr McCafferty added it was very hard to say where people would end up.
Some may find places in the private rental sector, he said, while others may benefit from social housing or the tenant in situ and first refusal schemes.
However, he warned that many will move into hidden homelessness and come to arrangements with friends and families.
This brings its own particular challenges, he said.
"That's a very, very difficult situation for any family or any individual to face when they're trying to get on with ruined lives, get kids to school and, you know, carrying responsibilities, working, commuting, all of those things," he added.
Mr McCafferty said there are now questions over the kind of private rented sector that the country wanted.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, Mr Varadkar said that in a crisis and an emergency, which the housing problem is, "the perfect is the enemy of the good".
He said there has been "an exodus" of small landlords from the rental market in recent years and there has been over 40,000 in the past five years.
Mr Varadkar said: "We were certainly aware that that was an issue and that's one of the things that's contributing to the housing crisis and the view that Minister [Darragh] O'Brien took, which I supported very strongly was that continuing the ban for longer would have caused more landlords to exit the market, thus making the problem worse later.
"And that's fundamentally one of the reasons why we decided not to continue with it."
Additional reporting: Fergal O'Brien
