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

According to the latest daft.ierental report, from which several people have quoted from, rent in my constituency is on average €1,320 per month. That is a 3.8% increase since the second quarter of the year and a 12.1% increase on last year. Indeed, with the exception of four and five-bed houses, the average rent for properties in the area in which I live and in the constituency that I represent surpasses the average monthly mortgage payment for those self-same properties.

I am very proud to be the daughter of parents who were housing activists in the 1960s. I am sure that it gives them no pleasure if they are watching this to see that their daughter still has to campaign and agitate for something as simple and as basic as security of tenure. I do not wish in any way to be personal but I would ask those Members who are not going to support the Bill whether they have ever rented and whether they have ever felt the unease that is caused by renting and by not having the type of security that should really be a basic and a given. It is regrettable that it is not. I rented for years when my daughter was young. I hated it. I hated not knowing where we were going to live at the end of the lease. I hated having to go cap in hand to my landlord to find out if he was going to renew the lease. People in that situation cannot make plans. It is bad when one is single, but it is worse when one has children. One cannot plan, know or look to the future. One is relying on goodwill and that is not good enough.

In the 1960s, my mother and father were active in the Dublin Housing Action Committee. They achieved quite an amount through direct action at the time. It is heartbreaking to look around and see how far back we have travelled. I was out last week with members of an organisation called Humans Too.

They were delivering food and clothes to people who were sleeping on the streets. There are no words to describe what those people will face tonight. It is absolutely freezing outside. I was freezing coming over to the House this evening. We have a crisis and we know that. When I had finished the soup run, which is not something I do often, I sat into my car and I was very upset, as anyone would be. We have an opportunity to do something about this tonight.

The people I spoke to had, to use an expression that members of the Government use but which I do not use because I do not like it, fallen into homelessness. That sounds like it is an accident but it is not; it is the result of policy. It is not an accident. They did not fall into homelessness. They did not trip up and accidentally find themselves homeless. They became homeless because of Government policy.

There is an opportunity this evening for Members in this Chamber to make a clear statement about security of tenure and the value we place on that. I urge every Deputy to consider what it is like for those people who are facing homeless now or who will face it in the coming weeks and, in that context, to support this Bill.

See this speech in context