Sinn Féin has today called for emergency laws to give tenants more notice before their homes are sold.

The call comes in the wake of notices to quit being served on 103 homes in the Cruise Park estate in Tyrrelstown.

Currently the law allows any tenant's lease to be terminated if the owner wants to sell the property.

Sinn Féin TD Eoin O'Broin said that emergency laws could be quickly passed to deal with those issues.

"Last week, 208 families in Tyrrelstown were informed that their rented accommodation had been bought en masse and that Goldman Sachs required vacant possession of their homes," he said.

"Some of these families had spent a decade living in these homes and a letter through the door is all it takes to throw them into homelessness.

"Vulture funds are the new absentee landlords of centuries past.

"We have seen similar behaviour right across the city and country in past months but not on the scale seen in Tyrrelstown.

"We need emergency legislation creating a compulsory code of conduct for banks and funds, where they are selling buy-to-let properties that are rented.

"The code of conduct needs to give sitting tenants an extended notice-to-quit period of up to 12 months and first option on becoming tenants in the property if is bought by a new landlord.

"We also need a legislative change to the mortgage to rent scheme to make it easy for local authorities and housing associations to keep people in family homes facing repossession by banks and property funds."