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

The decision to push through the section we have just dealt with will cause blue murder. When word filters out that people who have been on lists for ten or 12 years are no longer on a list, there will be uproar. That said, the Government seems hell bent on moving in this direction. Perhaps, if word gets out, there is some chance it will reconsider this before the Bill goes to the Seanad. Otherwise, the anger that will be directed at the Government for what has just been done will be extraordinary.

If the Government is hell bent on this path, the least it can do is prove its proposals can work. To be honest, if it was to ring local government officials tomorrow, they would tell it the proposals will not work. However, it could try to prove they could work by requiring local authorities and their officials, when they decide people must find private rental accommodation at the level of HAP set, to go and source the accommodation themselves. If the local authorities went to source it, they would find that it would cost hundreds of euro more than the current rent caps, that is if any accommodation could be found. In most cases, accommodation will not be available. No matter how sophisticated, well trained and well intentioned and resourced housing departments are, they will not be able to find accommodation. This is the challenge for the Minister of State.

I suggest the Minister of State should contact her local authority in Limerick to find out what is going on. I can tell her that my clinic is like an extension of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council's housing department. Such is the level of interaction between us that the director of housing asked me the other day whether we were taking over his department. This is the level of interaction on crisis situations at this time. This all comes down to the fact that accommodation cannot be found. It is not available. However, people in desperate situations, with families and illness and so on, are told to go and find private rental accommodation for the HAP.

I could cite a litany of examples, but will only cite the latest. A man came to me yesterday having just got out of the National Rehabilitation Hospital, after having two heart attacks. He can barely talk or walk and is in a situation where he needs support. What family he has is too old and disabled itself to provide him with accommodation or the support he needs. He has been told to go and find private rented accommodation to fit the caps. This is not a joke. This situation is too serious to joke about. It is obscene and absurd that this man, in the state of health he is in, would be asked to go and find rented accommodation at the caps or for the HAP. Fantasy is not the word for what is happening. This proposal is a disaster waiting to happen.

The proposal put forward by Deputy Ellis is a minimal measure. At least it would ensure we test the water by requiring officials to go out and find this accommodation. They will not find it, but at least if they try to find it, there will be no dispute about the situation. As things stand, there is dispute. People are told to go out and find accommodation, but when they come back having been unable to find it, they are told they have not tried hard enough and should go out and try harder. If the Minister of State and the Government believe this is workable - I tell them it is not - they should agree to this amendment so that the State will be required to do what it is asking tenants to do.

7 o’clock

If it did that, then it would find out how utterly unworkable this is. Then at least we could sit down together with the people on the housing list and come up with a plan that actually works.

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