Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on the Bill that has been introduced by Deputy Ó Broin, who works hard on the housing committee. The political point scoring that is happening in the House is not much help to the many people who are being evicted, who cannot get accommodation or who are homeless. While this is certainly a huge Dublin problem in the first instance, it is also a problem in my county of Tipperary and everywhere else. The special housing committee that was chaired by Deputy Curran did a lot of hard work when it inquired into this matter and produced its report. It seems to me that something is missing from this debate. We cannot seem to connect or get to the kernel of it. It is getting worse instead of better.

I heard Deputy Jan O'Sullivan attacking Fianna Fáil for point scoring. I remind her that the purse strings were under the control of her colleague, Deputy Howlin, when he served as one of the magic four economic managers for five years until quite recently. What did their gung-ho colleague, the former Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Kelly, do about this issue? It is easy to wring one's hands and attack others. The Labour Party had an opportunity to crack this problem when it was in government in recent times. I accept that Deputy Kelly met many people and organisations when he was the Minister in this area. I am sick and tired of hearing about reports and investigations.

I accept there are bad landlords. Of course there are bad landlords in County Tipperary and elsewhere, but there are many good landlords as well. We cannot demonise them as an endangered species. Some people think landlords are privileged people who wear gold suits, drive around in big cars and are nearly monster-like. We need to get real here. I have to declare that the only house I own is the one I live in with my eight children. I do not have any vested interest in this matter. Some of the people here who seem to have all the answers have never created a job or found a solution to any of these problems. All they do is talk.

My good friend, Deputy Boyd Barrett, is talking about taking to the streets again. What is he going to do? Is he going to get the homeless people to walk around with him? We need a good dose of reality in here. We need to get the local authorities to build houses again as they did in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They have failed miserably. I read some of the Minister's speech. I did not want to read too much of it because it was another prepared script. We have heard announcements and pronouncements about what the Government does and does not intend to do, but nothing is happening. The system has failed miserably. It is unable to deal with this crisis. It is able to deal with very few crises.

During Questions on Proposed Legislation in the House earlier today, I raised with the Minister, Deputy Bruton, my concerns around the Courts Bill 2016, which is coming down the line and is being debated in committee at the moment. I told the House that the Bill "proposes to have eviction and repossession cases returned to the Circuit Court" once more. This was blocked several months ago when the Land League and other groups prevented cases from going ahead.

Now, the Government is going to release them again. The Circuit Court is unable to deal with these situations and, in many counties, including in my own county, they are dealt with by the county registrars, who are unfit to deal with them. The registrar in my county left for some time and she was then brought back because she did not have enough evictions. This is what we are dealing with. The Circuit Court is not fit for the purpose of eviction from family homes. If the power is restored to the Circuit Court, it will be a recipe for disaster.

We are here talking about reports on housing and housing crisis committees yet, on the other hand, all of us have our heads in the sand with regard to what the banks are doing. They were allowed to destroy families and destroy initiatives not only with regard to families, but also with regard to buy-to-lets and the vulture funds that have been mentioned. It is a merry-go-round. If we go back there again, it will be ridiculous. The nonsense has been put forward by some in this House who are barristers and lawyers that they want this Bill changed because it will save families extra costs. For a family facing eviction who are unable to repay the financial institution, that is a red herring. The real issue is that 8,000 eviction cases have now collapsed as a result of this ruling. That the proposed change in the Courts Bill 2016 cannot be backdated for those 8,000 families is a gravy train for the barristers, with figures of €8,000 per case. It is the vested interests again.

There are complicated issues in this regard. There are 200,000 empty houses, according to the 2016 census. We need to think about that, given that some of these houses could have two or three units of accommodation. Some 80% are bank-forced evictions and there is the de-tenanting of the rental sector. These figures are in the research. There are 400,000 people in financial trouble and all this debt ends up registered on family homes. Where is the fairness and where is the just society? We are doing all of that ahead of this Bill, which is an effort to sort out this problem. We are playing hide and go seek. It is a merry-go-round and we cannot get off it. Someone needs to stop this merry-go-round and jump off, hold it up and expose it to reality.

I heard the other speakers and I support the Fianna Fáil amendment to the Bill. We need better standards, we need proper accommodation and we need some type of NCT-style approach, as mentioned by others, to make sure it is done right. We need to look at the rent certainty pilot schemes in Waterford and Carlow. Ordinary people who happen to become landlords, for whatever reason, did not all set out to be very wealthy people. Some are left a house or inherit a family home and, if they cannot live in it, they are entitled to rent it. There are many good landlords who are looking after their tenants. I would have questions to ask about the agency which advertises every day on the radio - it is the tenancy regulation body, although the name eludes me, but it does not solve many of the problems either.

We need to look at the lack of investment that continued during the boom but, above all, in the past five years, when we had the former Minister, Deputy Howlin, holding the purse strings, and he gathered them like it was his own, personal money. We had the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, who was going to change everything so nobody would be homeless. There are many more issues than will be discussed in this debate. The local authorities need to get back into the market and build and deliver the houses. We could do this in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s when there was no mechanisation.

On the point raised by Deputy Wallace, there is the developer and there is the builder. We are demonising the builders as if they were a protected species. They need money but the banks will not give it to them. Much of the problem goes back to the banks that we have bailed out and helped, yet I read today about repossessions. They just pass this from Billy to Jack. They have no interest in ordinary people because all they have an interest in is getting the houses. I will not even go near NAMA, but it is a huge property developer and the scandals going on there, including the knock-off sales to their friends, will be exposed and there will be inquiries into that. We will not have enough retired judges to have all the inquiries in a couple more years. We will have to put a CAO course forward for students to become retired judges in order to be appointed to be chairpersons of this investigation, that investigation and the next investigation. We are just not connected in here; we are not connected to the real issues.

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