Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The matter under discussion this evening is of enormous importance. We are talking about single people, families and children who do not know if in five weeks' time they will have somewhere to live. There could not be a matter more important for us to discuss. The Minister’s behaviour this evening, I have to say, while true to form, surprised me somewhat. He came in like a petulant child and showed no compassion or comprehension of the stress and strain that hundreds if not thousands of people are under. Rather than dealing with the matter at hand and the very reasonable suggestions many of us on this side of the Chamber put forward, he engaged in denial, deflection and wilful misrepresentation of everybody on this side of the House to avoid dealing with the issues.

Exactly as my good friend, Deputy Gould, said, the Minister then scurried out. He did not even have the courtesy to wait for the person on the floor to speak. He left the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, once again carrying the can. There is only one conclusion that I can draw from the Minister's behaviour: Deputy Boyd Barrett is right. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage does not care. If he did, he would have been here for the two hours of this debate and would have listened, considered and responded with some level of consideration.

What we are asking for is not unreasonable. We are asking for the Government to announce, at the earliest opportunity, that it is its intention to extend the emergency ban on evictions. It will have to be done. The sooner the Government announces it, the better. We ask the Government to accept what we are all telling it, in that the tenant in situ is not working the way the Minister believes it is and to rectify those problems in the detailed manner with regard to which I wrote to the Minister a number of months ago.

We are asking the Government to extend the tenant in situ scheme to cost rental housing. Of course, there have to be price caps and consideration of the rent, but the first thing the Government has to do is to extend the scheme to those who are not eligible for it at present and work out the details, as appropriate, afterwards. On top of that, we are begging the Government to mobilise all of the powers of the State in the way that took place during Covid, to add 1,000 or 2,000 additional social homes to the stock of social housing, above and beyond the Government's existing targets.

The measure to which the Minister referred, the Part 8 derogation, will not deliver a single home in the next 12 months. We know that. It is one of the reasons I did not think it was an especially good idea, but we did not oppose it, because we were not going to get in the way of the Government. It will not deliver a single extra home. None of the measures the Minister of State has outlined, with the greatest of respect to him, will do anything or provide any additional comfort for those men, women and, crucially, hundreds of children who face the very real prospect of losing their home in April, May or June.

If the Government keeps coming to this Chamber telling us its plan is working when rents, house prices and homelessness are rising and when even an increase in the number of private homes has no impact on growing levels of need or high housing costs, it shows the Government just does not understand. Waving, over and again, the same tired speeches and quarterly reviews does not convince anybody, least of all those people who most urgently need the Government's help.

I will do what I do at the end of all of these debates. I will appeal to the Minister of State for him and his Green Party colleagues to use whatever influence they have, this week and next, to get the Government to make a decision on this matter. They should not let it run into St. Patrick's week or until the eleventh hour. I ask the Government to extend the ban, protect the families and introduce emergency measures to reduce the flow of singles and families into homelessness and accelerate the exit of those in emergency accommodation. If the Government does not do that, this crisis will get worse.

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