Madam, - Having read the coverage in The Irish Times recently of the poor housing conditions provided by some private landlords, it strikes me, as a private tenant for many years, that tenants in the private rented sector have no organised lobby group to represent their views.
With 150,000 tenants housed by private landlords, ranging from people on higher incomes to those on social welfare, there is a huge potential to have an organised representative body to represent their views.
One only has to contrast the position of private tenants with that of the construction industry, property owners or non-profit housing associations, which have organised representative bodies to speak for them.
Tenants' unions are very common throughout Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, all of them members of the International Union of Tenants (IUT). Ireland is the only country in Europe that has no democratic representative body for private tenants despite the sector accounting for well over 10 per cent of the housing stock. - Yours, etc,
BRYAN McKAY, Upper Gardiner Street, Dublin 1.