Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Tá an Comhaontas Glas fíor-shásta tacaíocht a thabhairt don Bhille seo. Caithfear gníomhú láithreach chun a chinntiú nach rachaidh fadhb na ndaoine gan dídean in olcas agus chun a chinntiú nach mbeidh ar aon chlann eile a teach a fhágail.

The Green Party welcomes the Bill and will be supporting it. We have all seen the pain and misery caused by such family upheaval as a result of people having to leave their homes due to rent increases, the property owner wishing to turn over the property or, in some cases, the sale of the property as a distressed asset and the vulture fund owners, to use their own parlance, sweating that asset.

The Bill largely follows recommendations made by Threshold when it addressed the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness in May 2016. Threshold recommended increasing security of tenure for tenants, providing for rent certainty, establishing legal safeguards to allow tenants to remain after the sale of a property, amending the legal definition of a landlord to include receivers and lenders in possession, and introducing a code of conduct on buy-to-let mortgage arrears. The Bill provides for this.

According to Focus Ireland, repossessions are resulting in between 60 and 80 families a month becoming homeless. The latest Central Bank statistics indicate that approximately 80,000 private home mortgages are in arrears. Of these, almost 35,000 are in arrears more than 720 days. These statistics indicate that the unprecedented crisis of homelessness in the country could get much worse. The Bill plans ahead by putting in place measures to protect families at risk of being made homeless. The Bill seeks security of tenure.

We are often told that there are rules governing the operation of an economy that cannot be tampered with and that consequences will ensue. This is not true. The rules are changed all the time. In our economy and society the rule seems to be that humans are expendable. We now need to start to rewrite the rules and the first and overarching rule is that people matter.

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