Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I will support the motion. The former Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the current Minister have accepted we have a housing crisis on our hands. When will the Minister accept there is a housing emergency that needs emergency measures to deal with it? We simply have to look at the figures to show there is an emergency. There are 90,000 families on local authority housing lists. There are 8,600 people homeless, 3,000 of whom are children. There are 25,000 people on housing assistance payments and there are unaffordable rents and rising house prices. I will repeat what I said last week because it has to be repeated again and again. We need the formal declaration of a housing emergency by the Dáil. We need to stop repossessions and evictions from the banks we own - Allied Irish Banks and Permanent TSB. We can do that by a direction from the Minister. Sitting tenants must be legally entitled to remain as sitting tenants in purchase situations. We must immediately start to build an emergency house building programme by local authorities - 10,000 in 2017-2018 and rising after that. We also need compulsory purchase powers and a site levy.

In the half minute I have left, I will refer to two groups of people who are often overlooked in this emergency situation. First are the families in HAP accommodation. The HAP scheme is a disaster for tenants and a bonanza for landlords. Tenants do not have 2 cent to rub together at the end of the week because they are paying a local authority rent and a top-up to landlords. Even in County Tipperary, they often pay well in excess of €100 a week in rent between both. A communion, confirmation, wedding, death or illness drives them into serious debt and into the hands of moneylenders. That has to stop and proper accommodation has to be given.

The other group that is often forgotten are those who are marginally over the local authority limit for housing but who do not qualify for a mortgage. They end up in County Tipperary paying €900 a month for a three-bedroom house, which is more than €200 a week.

This is simply not good enough. The Government needs to take this by the scruff of the neck, declare an emergency and give homes to people who need them urgently.

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