Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

For this reason it is critical that housing officials can have the power to state, based on information which they are not required to disclose, that they believe a certain person is involved in serious anti-social activity and should be evicted. This system has worked well in recent years and there has not been a single case of abuse of the system, despite the wide-ranging powers given to local authority officials.

However, I wish to flag what is coming down the tracks. There are a number of legal challenges to this legislation waiting to be heard in the courts. The challenges are based on the UN Convention on Human Rights. If the legislation is struck down on the grounds of incompatibility with the UN Convention on Human Rights, we in the Dublin city area and many other local authority areas will be in serious difficulty. The tenants of local authority estates will pay the price for this in terms of further breakdowns in law and order, intimidation, bullying and threats in their areas as they go about their daily lives.

I hope that the Department is prepared and is aware that this is coming. Contingency plans must be made. If the legislation is struck down, we will have very serious problems on our hands. There is a need to put in place an alternative system that will allow local authorities to deal with the increasingly threatening and criminal behaviour engaged in by some local authority tenants. The number might be small but these people have a profound impact on vast numbers of law abiding local authority tenants who are being prevented from living in peace and quiet.

My second point addresses the development of private housing estates in recent years, whether they are conventional houses or apartments. We increasingly see housing estates and apartments built with no intention of their being taken in charge by local authorities. They are essentially built as private estates and are intended to always remain as such. This means that residents are being caught for all the charges involved in providing what we have always understood to be basic public services, such as sewerage, water supply, drainage, lighting and roads. I can understand what the local authorities are doing because they avoids great expense if they hand over them over to a developer and in turn to a management company.

See this speech in context