Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the accommodation and I will keep it to two minutes, strictly. In the past week in reply to Leaders' Questions, our Taoiseach was honest when he said this problem had been around for a very long time. If that is so, why has the crisis got worse and why have some landlords been left to go out of control? I emphasise that it is some landlords. In some cases, they have terrified their tenants. One landlord in west Cork is demanding a 60% increase in rent from an excellent tenant and waving a new contract knowing he can throw the tenant out with nowhere to turn. These landlords must be named, shamed and severely penalised as they give other honest landlords a bad name.

West Cork is a disaster area and part of a national emergency as there are no social houses being built while huge demand exists in Inishannon, Bandon, Clonakilty, Bantry, Dunmanway, Skibbereen, Kinsale, Castletownbere, Schull and many more places. My clinics are besieged by people who are being put out of their homes or who are pleading for a council house. In some cases, they are sleeping in cars while in others families are sleeping on friends' sofas. The housing assistance payment, HAP, has not worked. Did the Minister ever ring an auctioneer and ask how many houses are available to rent and how many landlords will take HAP? I urge him to do so.

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