Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Ó Snodaigh.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill which is long over due. I am glad it has come to the House to be debated. The issues raised in it are very important and in a constituency such as the one I represent, many of them are hugely important and need to be addressed immediately, if that could be done. We have a long waiting list for social housing and we have the same problems with management companies that prevail in many other areas. There are issues around anti-social behaviour, which I wish to address specifically, and homelessness. In fairness, all these issues are addressed in the Bill but they could certainly be identified in the area I represent.

I am disappointed that the purchase of local authority flats has not been addressed. I welcome what the Minister of State said, that the Attorney General will comment on it and this will be available before the Bill goes through the House. Much of the local authority housing in my constituency is represented by flats from the Liberties to Kilmainham to Inchicore and so on.

The issue of the purchase of flats has been on the agenda for a long time for these people. Many of them have been tenants for many years and have paid much rent over that time. They feel discriminated against in comparison to perhaps other members of their family who have a local authority house and an entitlement to purchase it. There is an urgency about giving these people the opportunity to purchase their flats, if they so wish. I understand there are legal problems but these must be overcome as quickly as possible. I hope that happens before the Bill goes through the House.

I wish to address the issue of anti-social behaviour because, unfortunately, it has been particularly relevant to me in the past couple of weeks as a result of specific incident. It is a problem which plagues many communities and I welcome the fact that it is being addressed, to a certain extent, in the Bill. I do not want to identify a particular location or area, because that would be unfair, but I want to identify ongoing anti-social behaviour of a very serious nature in my constituency which is causing quite a number of problems.

It reflects a combination of landlord greed, inaction by various authorities, social deprivation and drug-related problems. When one packages together all those problems, one can clearly see that we have a huge difficulty in trying to address this issue. The houses are privately owned and rented. The people renting them have multiple social problems and, unfortunately, they have attracted to the area many more people with similar problems. Drugs and alcohol, prostitution and violence have been reported to me as ongoing problems in that immediate area.

There are two sides to this problem. First, the tenants must be considered. Who inspects the apartments and decides that funding is to be made available from the State coffers to pay that landlord to provide these absolutely appalling bedsits, which is the only way to describe them? What agency should inspect them? The level of inspection is very low — I believe approximately one in ten properties is inspected. This is simply not good enough because this problem is ongoing. It allows the landlord to collect his rent on a regular basis because it is paid by the State and it would appear that no questions are asked. The poorest and the weakest are being allowed to live in effective squalor. They suffer from drug or alcohol addiction and, as I said, prostitution and violence are not uncommon.

The second aspect to this scenario is that the neighbours who live in the vicinity are also exposed to the consequences of this appalling behaviour on a regular basis. They are intimidated, the area is strewn with rubbish, the gardens are rat infested, their children are afraid and the elderly will not go out in the day, never mind in the evening. It is no exaggeration to say that they live in fear of their lives. I admit it is a slightly extreme example but everything I have said is absolutely accurate. I would be happy to provide the Minister of State with more detail on this and would welcome his intervention, which might be very worthwhile.

Arising from that is the next issue of homelessness which I am happy is being addressed in the Bill. An argument could be put forward by many who are aware of the situation, and with some validity, that at least these people have accommodation. If these bedsits and flats are closed down, where will these unfortunate people go? That raises an issue around the services provided for these people, including providing them with backup for their alcohol and drug addiction problems and with a decent level of accommodation. Unfortunately, all these issues are linked. There is some validity in the question that if this block of houses is closed down and these people are thrown out, where will they go? That is part of a major social issue as well as the homelessness issue.

I appreciate the issue of homelessness is a complex one. The reasons for it are complicated and cannot simply be dismissed or sorted out in one fell swoop. Nevertheless, they must be addressed. Homelessness arises for a variety of reasons. There is a social responsibility to minimise the effects of it on the poorest and the weakest. The official figure shows the number of homeless stands at approximately 5,000, but it is likely to be significantly greater than that because estimating the numbers at any given time is almost impossible and many of these people are under the age of 18. There are two issues there — the number of homeless and the fact many are under the age of 18.

The issue of homelessness has been on the agenda. Many people have written reports on it and there is an endless number of documents on it. The failure is the lack of any comprehensive approach to addressing it. I refer to the effort made after Christmas to provide temporary accommodation for homeless people. This was driven by the temperature.

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