Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ellis for allowing me to go ahead of him. I have to run. I apologise in advance since I have to speak elsewhere in about six minutes. I might not be able to stay for the Minister's response but I will read the transcript. The first question I was asked to bring up with the Minister is about stopping people getting evicted, which would stop people currently going into emergency accommodation from going in. As we know, the majority of those going in come from the private rental sector. A specific question I was asked to ask the Minister is where the regulations are for rental properties in receivership. It was promised in Rebuilding Ireland and has not come through yet. Buy-to-let properties being taken over by receivers is an example of where people are being evicted and they should not have to be. That is a specific question. As Deputy Barry said, why does the Minister not just freeze evictions for now? We could stop the flow.

I do not believe in HAP. It is a bad policy. It is effectively privatisation of social housing. All that said, insofar as the Minister is committed to it, as I mentioned to Ms Mary Hurley earlier on, he needs to instruct the DRHE or local authorities, if people manage to find a place that will accept HAP which is over the limit, to go out of their way not to say no and then drive them into homelessness.

I will read this message which I got today:

Unfortunately, due to the [bleeping] HAP rules, we are not able to rent our home in Enniskerry, which we found, as we are only able to get €1,500 from Wicklow while it is €1,950 in Dublin, [which is just over the border] so on Friday we are moving into a hotel in Bray, which is going to cost them [the council] €4,930 a month. Wouldn't it be easier to let me have the Dublin rate? I am emailing Eoghan Murphy and our local TD Simon Harris as a matter of urgency. It took me three months to find this house in Enniskerry. There is nothing in north Wicklow under €2k and Dublin is even higher. I am so upset, angry and scared. My daughter is distraught. She was all set to move into the new place...

We have to do something about examples like that. The decision being made not to give the uplift to the Dublin rate, which is just a few miles over the border, means we are going to pay a lot more and that woman is going to be in a hotel in Bray. This stuff has to change.

The critical point I want to make to the Minister is this. He said he has only been in the job for the last two years, and so on and so forth. There is a problem with HAP and we have this controversy about why people will not accept HAP tenancies, although I somewhat question that. It is more the case that people are being told that a property has been advertised or that a landlord accepts HAP, and they are told to find the property themselves, although families with children find it very difficult to do that. The reason they do not want this is that HAP is not social housing in the way a council house is. Does the Minister not think it is about time to admit they are right in saying that? He says HAP is working. Can he be honest? A HAP tenancy, which is maybe secure for 12 months and where people can and do get evicted, although the Minister said some HAP tenancies last longer, is not as secure as a council house. Can the Minister admit that is true?

People are right in saying it is not the same as a council house and it should not be treated under legislation as being the same as a council house. The decision to treat it the same as a council house was made in 2011, which is when the legislation was changed. The initial legislation was drafted by Fianna Fáil in 2009 but Fine Gael-Labour commenced it in April 2011. Should the Minister not just admit that it was wrong? Even if he says it is a temporary solution, and I do not think it is a good temporary solution, will he acknowledge it is not a permanent solution and should not be treated as such? People who are on lists for years or in emergency accommodation should not be forced to accept that it is the same as a council house when they know it is not the same as a council house and does not have the same security. If the Minister acknowledged that and allowed people to stay on the list, we would at least be facing reality, the reality that people on housing lists and in emergency accommodation have to live.