Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am very proud that this Bill has been proposed. There has been much commentary and debate in the past six months and previously on the housing crisis the country faces. A perfect storm of a lack of social housing, spiralling rents and Government mismanagement has done untold social damage. The worst insecurity is the knowledge that one could be evicted at the whim of one's landlord.

This is a relatively simple Bill. While it does not do everything needed to stem the tide of people becoming homeless it does contain practical provisions that will stop families ending up in emergency accommodation. It discourages landlords from using the spurious excuse of needing a property for a family member by forcing them to compensate tenants. It will remove the need for a house to be vacant in order to be sold. It gives more rights to tenants in terms of security of tenure. The Planning and Development (Housing) and Residential Tenancies Bill introduced by the Minister and debated extensively in this Chamber did not deal with these issues. The endless calls during that debate for a moratorium on evictions were washed over by arguments about the rights of private property as per the Constitution.

I do not blame the Minister personally for the housing crisis but I do blame his party. I also blame the system that his party upholds for the crisis of housing. I am an optimist by nature, but I am pessimistic when I see the same failed policies of previous Governments and Ministers that do nothing to address the fundamental issues of housing need and social justice in Ireland. In any system that gives priority to private property over citizenship, housing and the basic right to shelter will always be secondary. The system needs to be dismantled.

I commend the Bill to the House.

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