Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for coming in. I have been listening intently to their contributions and those of the Deputies and Senators. I have been in contact with a lady who has a child and received a notice to quit last July. The local authority never purchased the house. The landlord has sold the house on the private market and now this lady is facing eviction in two weeks' time. On the opposite side to that, I have two landlords who want to sell their houses to the local authority. They contacted it in October and November last and they still have not heard a word. It turns out these landlords, who are decent, respectable and good people, never issued notices to quit because they did not want to put their tenants through undue duress and stress. They told the local authority they wanted to sell up while leaving the tenant in place and asked about the tenant in situscheme.

I am hearing that local authorities do not have the staff to deal with the volume. It was expressed a while ago that staff are needed for acquisition, engineering, reports, valuing and legal teams. I know of no local authority that can go from zero, which is where we were this time last year, to where we want to be, that is, delivering the tenant in situscheme at the volume we are talking about. We are being unfair on local authorities and to the staff in procurement and allocations. It has been unfair to tenants that an expectation has been created that is not being delivered on.

A comment was made earlier about delivery within four months. I am thinking of two cases I am dealing with. In one, a woman rented her property to a family who are homeless. The family have young children and one of them is on the spectrum. They do not need a notice to quit, but as it turns out, the only way the local authority will even consider purchasing that property is if the family are at risk of eviction. How many additional staff will be required to deliver the tenant in situ scheme at the volume being proposed, in our guests' opinion? The figure of 1,500 that has been proposed is a drop in the ocean if we are serious about stemming homelessness.