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

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the debate and in particular to address the amendments tabled by the Government of Fine Gael, the Independent Alliance, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party. It is important to note that none of the amendments challenges the fundamental principle of the motion. Therefore, it is very clear it is totally within the law to bring forward measures which, in the public interest, impinge on private property rights in matters relating to housing, in accordance with Articles 43.2.1° and 43.2.2° of Bunreacht na hÉireann.

The Minister, Deputy Murphy, in his contribution indicated I wanted either to suspend or change the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth. I made it quite plain that my proposal was to use the existing provisions of Bunreacht na hÉireann, subject to the exigencies of the common good, as the articles say, to declare a housing emergency and to deal with amendments that are needed to ensure the housing and homelessness emergency is dealt with urgently. The Minister also said his policy is working and that is what his amendment says. However, I can tell him that nobody I know believes that. The Minister should ask any of the advocacy groups or Brother Kevin who deals with homeless people hourly and daily. He should ask the many volunteers who are running soup kitchens all over this country, including those running the soup kitchen at the historic GPO in O'Connell Street in Dublin, the site of the 1916 Rising. He should ask the volunteers running the soup kitchen at the railway station in my home town of Clonmel. They will all tell the Minister that not enough is being done and that the situation is getting worse.

What do some of the advocacy groups say? Focus Ireland very recently in the past fortnight said "We’re never going to tackle this problem if we don’t reduce the flow of people coming into homelessness." Its representative went on to say, "There is a failure to understand how critical that obvious point is that you need to cut the numbers coming in and not just look at the emergency measures when they're homeless." He went on to say:

This is a question of ideology. It's putting property rights ahead of the rights of tenants.

What did the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice say just a week ago? It said, "Rebuilding Ireland, the Government’s Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, relies far too heavily on market-based solutions to the problems facing Irish housing." For this reason it predicts the plan will fail in its stated objective of developing a housing system that is affordable, stable and sustainable. It went on to say that despite the efforts of the Government over the 15 months since Rebuilding Ireland was published, homelessness has increased by 27%, asking prices for houses have risen by 12%, and new rental prices have increased by 11.8%. The availability of rented properties within the limits for the various rent supplement schemes have diminished. It goes on to say that the policy of the past 25 years has led to a chronic undersupply of real social housing and has resulted in the homelessness crisis we are now experiencing and in the trebling of the number of households on housing waiting lists between 1996 and 2016. The social policy officer with the centre went on to say, "As we mark the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, we need to recognise that housing deprivation is one of the most serious forms of poverty in the Ireland of today and that in recent years the housing system has become the locus of some of the deepest inequality evident in our society." She went on to say that the Jesuit centre is calling for a new direction for housing policy in Ireland, one based on recognising that housing is a fundamental human right. What did Fr. Peter McVerry say as recently as 18 October? He said "Unless we prevent more people coming into the system, then trying to house homeless people is like trying to empty the bath water with the tap still running." He went on to say:

It should be made illegal to evict people into homelessness, particularly families. That’s what we did during the famine years and we’re still doing it today in 2017.

He said:

Basically, I think, this whole question of housing, you have to take on vested interests. You have to take on the banks. You have to take on the greedy landlords. You have to take on the vulture funds. You have to take on big vested interests. I think that is what this conservative Government is not prepared to do.

Nobody believes that what the Government is doing to tackle the crisis in housing and homelessness is enough. The Government is burying its head in the sand. The Fianna Fáil amendment is one of its usual spin. Fianna Fáil started the privatisation of social housing. It handed the building of social houses over to its builder and developer friends. It stopped local authorities building social and affordable houses. I recall quite well when I was a member of South Tipperary County Council that the policy was announced at a council meeting. I said at the time it would end in grief, and it has. It has led to the slippery slope of the housing and homeless emergency we have today. It has led to a tripling of the numbers on the housing waiting lists since 1996.

The Labour Party amendment is totally disingenuous. It claims the Kenny report would apparently now survive constitutional scrutiny. The Kenny report, which people may or may not know, was published in 1974 and dealt with the price of building land. That means, 43 years later, the Labour Party finds it would survive constitutional scrutiny. It sounds to me very much like the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus. One must remember that in those 43 years, the Labour Party was in government on no fewer than three occasions and had senior housing Ministers. It did absolutely nothing to implement that report. The amendment also states that "the power of the Oireachtas to impose restrictions on [private] property rights in the public interest is by now constitutionally well established". However, Deputy Howlin introduced the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation which he said required the declaration of a housing emergency and a certification of that emergency to ensure the private property rights of pensioners could be reduced and withheld.

A previous Labour Party Minister with responsibility for housing regularly indicated that he was prevented from introducing rent control measures because of constitutional difficulties. Of course, the Labour Party Attorney General gave advice that it was unconstitutional to give sitting tenants the right to continue their tenancies in cases of sale. This was disingenuous, to say the least.

Deputies Barry and Joan Collins referred to the need for a major national housing campaign outside the House. I agree that one will be needed if we are to deal with the housing and homelessness emergency.

The amendments tabled by the Government, Fianna Fáil and the Labour Party indicate that they are prepared to formally declare a financial emergency and to use it to remove a considerable portion of the private property of public service pensioners on quite low incomes, but when it comes to the private property of vulture funds, banks and the Irish super-rich, they are unwilling to take similar measures to tackle the homelessness crisis. I, therefore, again propose the motion to enable those who are suffering in the housing emergency to be rescued urgently from their awful plight. I appeal to all Members, particularly backbenchers, to support the motion. There could be no more appropriate way to honour the memory of Pádraig Mac Piarais, the other 1916 Rising leaders and the Deputies in the Thirty-two Counties who voted through the primacy of human welfare over private property in the democratic programme of the First Dáil in 1919. I commend the motion to the House.

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