Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are 9,000 people on the housing list in Fingal, 225 of whom are families. Some 185 of those families will sleep in emergency accommodation tonight.

I have been contacted by a young mother from Swords who has two children with special needs, one of whom has a service dog. That woman had to fight tooth and nail to get a service dog for her poor child. She is facing eviction in May and has nowhere to go. There is nowhere for her to rent and there is no emergency accommodation that will take her, her children and this vital service dog. This is Ireland in 2016, and it is not right.

I extend my support to the campaign spearheaded by Councillor Paul Donnelly in Tyrrelstown. While we welcome the news from the developer that there will be no evictions until the tenants have found alternative accommodation, we see now a shrinking rental sector with more tenants coming on stream. Those people will be competing now for accommodation with the young mother and her two children with special needs.

We have a caretaker Government and we need strong legislation to prevent more situations arising such as the one in Tyrrelstown. We cannot rely on the goodwill of so-called vulture capitalists. There are potentially tens of thousands of people in the same situation as the people in Tyrrelstown, and that will continue until we have the legislation in place to deal with it. It is not good enough for the Minister in charge to simply do nothing.

The heavy reliance of this caretaker Government on the private rental sector and the increase in rents, coupled with the decrease in rent allowance, has led to a sharp increase, especially in the towns of Balbriggan and Swords, in the number of families no longer able to bridge the gap between rent allowance and the rising cost of rents, so they find themselves at the mercy of the housing department in Fingal County Council. That situation continues in Fingal and throughout the country. We need action, not just debates. We do not need a trip to the twilight zone courtesy of the Tánaiste speaking as if there was no crisis. In the real world, not the twilight zone where the caretaker Government lives, there is a very real crisis.

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