Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak briefly on this very important Bill and I thank the members of People Before Profit for the great work they have done on the Bill and for bringing it before us today. The timing of a discussion on this Bill could not be more appropriate or fortuitous. It seems that our housing and homelessness crisis has reached emergency heights. The idea of coming forward with a housing emergency measures in the public interest, HEMPI, Bill in the rental and to utilise the same type of dramatic action that we saw taken on behalf of the banks and the bankers six, seven or eight years ago is totally appropriate. It is what the Government should have done and what the next Government will definitely have to do after the next general election.

I tabled a Topical Issue matter earlier today, to which the Minister of State, Deputy English, kindly responded, on the lack of communication with families currently in homeless accommodation and their upcoming move-out dates of 1 July. In just six weeks, the Minister, Deputy Coveney, has promised to move 1,256 families with 2,563 children into alternative, more suitable accommodation.

The Bill before us seeks to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 and utilises the same principles as financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation. The general thrust of the Bill is that emergency measures are now absolutely necessary for the common good in the housing area, and that is why I fully support and welcome this Bill. It echoes what I have been saying for at least the past two years, that the crisis is so severe and deepening that drastic action is required by Government to address it in a meaningful way. It is no use coming into the House with a mantra, as the Minister, Deputy Coveney, did earlier, about rent certainty and predictability when he is not prepared to regulate the market, which is the most market of having a roof over one's head.

Section 2 of the Bill would insert a Chapter 5A into the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. This chapter deals with "fair rent areas", as they are rightly called, and would link rent increases to the consumer price index. Before Christmas Dublin and Cork city were named rent pressure zones in the Government's so-called rent certainty legislation introduced by the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and by the end of January this year, he had designated 23 more towns and Galway city as rent pressure zones. They are those areas where rent is above the national rent and have had more than 7% rental inflation in four of the preceding six quarters. Rent increases in these areas cannot be more than 4% for three years. New properties and those which have been substantially refurbished are exempt from this limit. Rent pressure zones will only exist for three years and apparently cannot be extended beyond that. That is the value of the Bill and proposal before us and the measures included in it are far stronger and will go much further in providing real stability, affordability and security of tenure for tenants.

Census 2016 showed us that the cost of renting in Dublin city has increased by almost 30% since 2011, in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, it increased by 26.2%, in Fingal, it increased by almost 23%, in south Dublin, it increased by almost 23% and in Kildare, it increased by 20%. The average weekly rent paid to private landlords in April 2016 was up 17% on the figure for 2011.

The Minister referred to the rate of the rental increase slowing. That reminded me of a former leader of Fine Gael, a former Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, who talked about the rate of the increase in unemployment slowing but it was still increasing. That was the problem we had to deal with when Garret FitzGerald was Taoiseach in the 1980s.

On Tuesday of this week, the Simon Communities in Ireland launched its study, Locked Out of the Market VII: The Gap between Rent Supplement/HAP Limits and Market Rents, which showed that almost 90% of properties for rent are unaffordable to people on housing supports. That is a shocking indictment of the Department under the Minister of State's senior Minister. An example of a gap of around €800 for a two-bed unit in Dublin was cited. In a study over three days, it found that just 12% of the available 600 properties were affordable within the rent supplement-housing assistance payments limits, yet the Minister of State reiterated in the earlier debate on my Topical Issue matter that HAP was working for people facing homelessness or in homeless accommodation. Of that 12%, only two properties were affordable to a single person and just seven properties for a couple who receive those payments. The study also showed that there are now 48% fewer homes available to let than there were in May 2015.

At a briefing on this Bill, organised by Deputy Boyd Barrett earlier this week, representatives from Focus Ireland and Threshold demonstrated how broken the current housing sector is. Focus Ireland has been working directly with families entering homelessness and has previously said that rent increases were the number one reason for homelessness in families, and that is certainly my experience as well. When people become homeless it is always due to them facing increasing rents or attempts by landlords to use various devices to evict people and then get increased rents when they are gone from the properties. Now, however, the main reason for people entering homelessness is evictions due to landlords selling up. Where is this being monitored? Even though a landlord signs a statutory declaration to say that the property will be sold, where is the follow up?

On Tuesday last, Mr. Mike Allen drew a very apt analogy that people allowing properties to become vacant in such a crisis is comparable with hoarding food in the middle of a famine. He is right. There is more than enough vacant property and land across the country, but again the Government seems to be too scared to act to achieve real rent certainty or even to begin local authority housing programmes rather than the feeble efforts we have had so far from the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Minister of State, Deputy English.

Census 2016 gave us the up-to-date figures and showed that there has been a 15% decrease in the number of vacant dwellings between 2011 and 2016. Some 62% of those were holiday homes, but that still leaves 183,000 other vacant dwellings. For the first time in census 2016, the type of dwelling was captured in terms of identifying vacant dwellings. It found that in counties like Cavan and Leitrim there was massive developments proportionately in the Celtic tiger era, which represented a high proportion of those.

Rebuilding Ireland has a target of 47,000 units of social housing up to 2,021, yet the vast majority of this is to provided within the private rented sector through the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme. There are currently around 20,700 HAP tenancies across Ireland, including 7,000 which have moved from rent supplement payments to HAP. I have consistently been questioning, as I did earlier with the Minister of State, the appropriateness and effectiveness of this programme as, while housing need is considered to be "met" in a HAP tenancy, the local authority has no part in the tenancy and, therefore, gives none of the security of the previous rental accommodation scheme. The Minister, Deputy Coveney, continues to repeat the mantra but even since I last spoke to the Minister of State, I have talked with a constituent in Fingal county who is facing homelessness in two weeks' time. She has been trying endlessly to access HAP type accommodation because the last thing a family like hers needs, with all the issues a young family faces, is to become homeless in two weeks. She does not want to go into that system, but nobody wants to know when the HAP is mentioned. I urge the Minister of State, and the Minister, Deputy Coveney, in whatever will be the formulation of the next Government, to give the local authorities a direct role in the provision of HAP - in other words, to make them ultimately responsible for securing HAP tenancies because certainly in the Dublin region, their current policy is not working.

There are now almost 7,500 homeless people in Ireland. There has been a huge increase in family homelessness, especially in the 18 to 24 years cohort. According to census 2016, 10% of the population are living in overcrowded conditions, and tens of thousands are languishing on the housing waiting lists.

We are talking about what history will write about various people, including the outgoing Taoiseach and the outgoing Minister for Finance, as if history was some stern person in the future. History will be the work of scholars in years to come and what their judgment will be.

Despite the palaver in the newspapers today, their judgment may very well be harsh on the outgoing Taoiseach and perhaps the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government as we have seen this scandal of desperate suffering of families and children who are in homeless accommodation. The Government has allowed that to go on. We have seen many redress schemes arising because of scandals in the past. In the 2020s and 2030s, history might record the making of redress to the children who suffer tonight because they must live in that kind of accommodation.

This modest, simple and straightforward Bill is the way to go and we need emergency housing legislation. I commend People Before Profit for bringing it forward.

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