Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We could debate this issue all day, but I must say that the Taoiseach has some cheek. On a day when under the Taoiseach's stewardship there are 10,000 people in emergency accommodation, the best he can offer is that if the Opposition was in Government, it would be worse because we would introduce a measure that one could not evict a family into homelessness. Let us think about the proposal that Focus Ireland is putting forward, and what we in the Sinn Féin Party have put forward, which is the Focus Ireland amendment, where a landlord who has been supported through the tax net, which means he or she got beneficial treatment in terms of tax because he or she was a landlord, cannot evict a family into homelessness. We say that is an appropriate measure but the Taoiseach states the family can be evicted into homelessness, yet he tells us this is a priority. This is why a large section of those 10,000 people are in homeless accommodation today and this is why I cannot take what the Taoiseach says on this issue seriously because he will not take the steps that will prevent this emergency.

By calling the housing crisis an emergency, it means we can take emergency actions. We can have follow up and a fire in the belly to deal with this issue. We understand the pain, suffering and damage, both psychological and emotional, that is being done as a result of the situation in which many people find themselves today. There is no fire in the belly of those in Government in regard to the housing crisis, and instead they state how many millions are being spent on dealing with it. The Opposition supports the simple proposal not to evict tenants into homelessness.

The Taoiseach does not agree with the proposal and believes it is fine to do so, which is what is happening now. I am dealing with a constituent who is facing being evicted into homelessness for a second time because the Government will not deal with the issue.

The Taoiseach spoke of hard rent caps and rent certainty. Rent certainty is about tagging rent increases to inflation to ensure we do not have further increases in rent such as those that have occurred under the Government, including double-digit increases in certain areas. Rent increases have resulted in people who belong to the "barely getting by" class finding themselves unable to get by and having to present as homeless to local authorities. Solutions to the current emergency have been proposed and the Government must implement them and get a grip on the problem. It must not allow more families to become homeless and then deal with them as emergency cases.

Last week, as other members will attest, representatives of a State-owned bank informed this committee that it had 1,000 properties lying empty. The Taoiseach has tried to convince me that the Government considers this matter an emergency or a priority. The figure of 1,000 empty properties relates to only one bank. There are many others, for example, the Housing Agency offered more than 1,000 properties, of which only 400 were taken up.