Eamonn Maloney (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Office of the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this matter. I begin by referring to a previous debate in the House on the same subject matter, not last month or the previous month but in December last year. During that debate I stated emergency legislation to freeze rents was required immediately, and this was almost a year ago. During the debate I, among others, made the point the situation of families becoming homeless would inevitably get worse. It is unprecedented because we have never been in this situation in the history of the State. Historically, when we have thought about homelessness we tended to think about individuals who are homeless but this has all changed. This is one of the legacies and part of the fallout of the so-called Celtic tiger, when the people on the opposite side of the House, who are not here, ceased building houses for social housing and did not fund it for years. They promoted the idea that everyone could be a private home owner and one could build here or there and that if one wanted to be a landlord one could build two or three houses and rent them out. This is what got us to where we are now and the situation is getting worse.

With regard to families becoming homeless, it is predominantly an issue that relates to the private rental sector. Everyone in the House knows rents have gone through the ceiling and the private rental sector can charge whatever it wishes. Rents continue to increase and I see this in my constituency. It is a big problem. One of the new features of homelessness is that it is not people who are out of work and unemployed who cannot afford private rents, we now have cases where families with two breadwinners are affected because the landlord continuously puts up the rent and these families are priced out of it. This is happening on a very large scale and is why we have the stories we speak about almost daily regarding the number of children who are homeless.

This is preventable. Unless someone else has a solution to it, I hold to the view I took last December that we need to take control of the increase in the private rental sector. The only way to do this is with a rent freeze for a period of two years to allow the Government to start to build social housing again and to allow the private sector to commence the construction of private homes. It is the only way to do it.

There are good and bad landlords, and I have met both types as, I am sure, have other Members of the House. Not all landlords are necessarily bad. However, I must say the vast majority of them are exploiting the present situation where there is not sufficient availability of rented homes. Rents continue to increase and will continue to do so unless the Minister and I as legislators do something about it.

I raise this issue again so the Government will make some commitment to introduce emergency legislation to stop this continuing problem of families and people who never thought they would be homeless ending up homeless.

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