Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted the Dáil has agreed to set up an all-party committee to deal with the issue of housing and homelessness. It is long overdue. We have a national emergency, which should be called a national emergency. I will campaign that we call it such. Nowhere is it expressed as vividly as it is in my own city of Limerick. Today, in the local newspaper, the Limerick Post, the front page story describes the conditions people are in and the desperate things they are doing to try to secure accommodation. It also features a story about myself and my constituency office. Unfortunately, we had to close one day last week because the number of people with issues of homelessness presenting was causing a stress to ourselves. Families with young children were coming in in very obvious states of distress and we were unable to cope with the number that approached us that day.

In previous generations in Limerick, the local authority played an active role in building houses which alleviated a lot of the shortages. From the 1950s to the 1970s, local authorities provided good quality, well-built social housing for the people of Limerick and across the State. Figures for those experiencing homelessness are continuously under-represented. They do not account for families or individuals who are staying with friends or for generational families who are living together in what can often be very cramped or unsafe accommodation. It does not reflect the significant number of people who are at risk of serious homelessness. More and more working people on low to middle incomes are finding it difficult to cope. The number of people sleeping on the streets or in emergency accommodation is shocking.

However, as long as people struggling to pay mortgages or rent are not supported by Government policies, these figures will continue to grow rapidly. Given the chronic shortage of social housing, many have been forced to rent privately to avoid homelessness. In recent years, the State has abdicated its responsibility in the area of housing provision and shifted this vital social need to the private rented sector, including the transfer of billions of euro in public money into the pockets of private landlords. The Celtic tiger period saw an unprecedented housing boom nationwide. Local authorities stopped building social housing, turning instead to schemes such as the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, in 2006 and the housing assistance payment, HAP, which was trialled in Limerick in 2014. While RAS and HAP have been welcome boosts to some families and individuals seeking affordable accommodation, they have also proved to be unreliable as many tenants have been forced to leave their homes when contracts were not renewed. In many cases, local authorities were unable to provide alternative accommodation. The effectiveness of rent supplement, HAP and RAS has always been problematic. It has never proved adequate to assist people to meet rent costs.

While the State and local authorities have become ever more dependent on the private rented sector for housing provision, they have singularly failed to monitor the quality of the accommodation provided. Many landlords get away with providing sub-standard and often unsafe accommodation to people in little or no position to complain. While housing inspections are supposed to happen, a tenant might have a better chance of winning the lottery than having a housing inspection completed. Other major complications are the shortage of suitable properties to rent and the upward movement in rents. Sinn Féin is in favour of greater regulation of the private rented sector to ensure the protection of tenants. Sadly, the neglect of previous Governments means this temporary solution has become permanent.

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