Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Ceann Comhairle and other Members a happy Christmas and join him in wishing the staff and ushers the same. I mean that very sincerely.

What we are talking about today, however, is people for whom Christmas is very insecure. I hope that everyone here has a home to go to, but we are talking about people who have very temporary homes, if they have homes at all, and they do not know where their permanent home will come from. Our focus today and as we enter the new year must be on action and what we can do rather than what we can say. Speakers before me have very eloquently described the situation. Deputy Munster captured it very well, as did Deputies Rabbitte and Casey, in describing the situation in which children in particular find themselves. The three things I want to address are the emergency situation, how to stop people losing their homes and how we can speed up the construction and delivery of social homes.

I will focus on those three areas because they are all linked. We all know this issue is complex and requires a variety of actions. Perhaps in some ways Rebuilding Ireland contained too many different subsets of actions because many of the targets simply were not reached. I will divide my time between those areas.

The first issue is the more than 8,000 people and more than 3,000 children who are currently homeless and who have been described so eloquently. In a reply to a parliamentary question, the Minister told me that extra emergency beds would be provided. I presume they have been delivered. There were to be 200 extra beds in Dublin by mid-December and a number of extra beds in other cities. I am not sure if the Minister is due to reply to the debate but if he does I hope he will be able to reassure Members in that regard and that there will be enough beds for everybody. Unfortunately, that does not mean that everybody ends up in a bed. For various reasons, some people do not take up the beds. However, we must ensure there are enough beds. We also must ensure that there is enough information provided. A lack of information is often a problem for people. I accept that there are telephone numbers to ring and so forth but people often do not know exactly what to do when they become homeless or when they are in a precarious situation, so information is crucial. It must also be accessible to the people in that situation, not somewhere on a website but available directly to people.

Deputy Casey described the people in his hotel having to get up early to get to Dublin and the situation for children. There must be a way whereby people would not be obliged to ring around to find a hotel. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive does very good work, but it is totally wrong that a family should be put in that situation. I introduced the Housing (Homeless Families) Bill and it was agreed by all Members, which I welcome. I thank Deputy Bailey, the chair of the housing committee, who wrote to me to say that the Bill will be dealt with in the committee. I ask that it be dealt with quickly. One of the objectives of the Bill is to ensure that no families with children would be sent to a Garda station, as happened earlier this year in Dublin when 12 families and 30 children were sent to Garda stations. One of the reasons that happened is that there is no recognition of children. They are just recognised as dependants of homeless adults.

I believe the Bill will make a difference to that situation and also to the situation Deputy Casey described where families must ring around. They go off to work or school in the morning and then they must ring around to find a hotel. If my legislation was passed, the housing authorities would be obliged to take the needs of the children into account and to deal with the other issues involved. For example, people have described how homeless children feel about it. I was struck when a young child said that her little sister, who was two years old, wanted to play with her but the only place where they could play was between the two beds in the hotel room. It is wrong for children to be stuck in that type of situation. I realise that my Bill will not solve everything but I believe it could make a difference and I hope we can get it through Committee Stage as quickly as possible.

There is also the issue of people being put out of their homes and the ways of preventing that. I acknowledge that there has been some action and changes in that regard, but I am convinced that more must be done. We heard Frank on the radio this morning. He is 71 years old and has lived in the same house for seven years, but suddenly has received a notice to quit. That should not happen. There should be security of tenure. Many Members have argued in the House for security of tenure and for the so-called Tyrrelstown amendment to be modified to ensure that people cannot be evicted for spurious reasons. There is an article in the Irish Independenttoday which I believe relates to a leaked document from the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. It indicates that four in ten families that have become homeless have been issued with notices to quit by landlords. Only two of those cases were for anti-social behaviour. The others were for either not being able to pay the rent or due to plans to sell the property.

This issue of plans to sell the property definitely needs to be addressed because we all have heard evidence of landlords giving notice to quit, saying they were selling the property and then not selling it or have heard evidence of the other reason, which is about substantially altering the property. I know the Minister has brought in or will bring in some measures about landlords saying they will carry out major changes to the property and then putting up the rent. In respect of selling the property, we saw the examples in Tyrrelstown and my constituency involving the Strand Hotel and Grove Island where groups of tenants were given notice. I know there was a case in Cork, which Deputy Barry raised recently. We need to tighten up this area to prevent evictions.

Another issue involves rent pressure zones. Obviously, they are working in some areas for some people but I think people are getting around them even in rent pressure zones. My city of Limerick is not a rent pressure zone so there is no protection. On average, rents increased there by an average of 11% last year. Places like Waterford are also still not designated as rent pressure zones, while in the counties around Dublin, some areas are left out while others are included. That most definitely needs to be reviewed and it needs to be done quickly. Again, I received a reply to a parliamentary question on this issue and I acknowledge some work is being done on that. All the points I am making are on getting things done quickly and not waiting and talking. The Simon Community produced a document entitled "Locked Out Of The Market". It has updated its figures recently. It carried out research into available rental properties within the cap limits for housing assistance payment, HAP, and rent supplement. The statistics show that on a particular day at the end of the third quarter, only four properties under the different categories, that is, for single people, a couple, a couple with one child and a couple with two children in the whole of Dublin city centre were within the cap. There were three such properties in Cork, one in Limerick city, one in Waterford city and none in Galway city. This shows that the increased cost of rent has simply gone beyond the limits relating to HAP and rent supplement. Again, this area needs urgent attention. I know we hear about reviews but it seems to take so long to deal with any of these issues. It was this time last year when we were dealing with that housing Bill at midnight and were doing sums to figure out how we would calculate rent pressure zones, etc. All of us in opposition proposed various amendments. That was a year ago but we are still stuck with pretty much the same kind of rules we had then despite the fact that, as others have said, the numbers have been increasing all the time.

I also urge the Minister to develop Housing First. I acknowledge he has increased the numbers. A director is to be appointed. I do not know if that has been advertised but, again, that was something the Minister told me in a reply to a parliamentary question. Housing First is the solution for many people who sleeping rough on our streets. They are the kind of people who may have addiction problems and other problems such as mental health problems who need that kind of wraparound 24-hour service that Housing First provides. There are some really good organisations that have been funded to roll out Housing First. I am very familiar with it in my own city where the Simon Community and Novas are the two bodies that operate it. It really works for the long-term homeless who probably would have difficulty in sustaining a home if they did not have that kind of support.

The other area I want to talk about is supply. We need to see something happen with vacant homes. It is the one leg of the Rebuilding Ireland programme that was never brought in. I think March 2017 was meant to be the deadline in terms of a strategy. I acknowledge that some measures have been introduced but again, this is an area where we should be able to see houses coming into use quickly.

The local authority void scheme, which started back in 2014, was very successful. There have been at least 5,000, if not more, social houses delivered through that scheme. We need to see vacant houses brought back into use. Others have focused on the issue of construction, which is painfully slow. On Leaders' Questions yesterday, Deputy Catherine Martin cited statistics for the end of the third quarter of 2017 and said the aim was to have completed 2,284 social houses. Only 809 were completed by the third quarter. I think she said there was €1 billion of an underspend but I am not sure if that is the correct figure. The point she was making, which is correct, is that while there are commitments, and the Minister said what will happen next year, they are not being delivered within the timescale.

I did some research on the social housing construction projects progress report, which is published regularly. On the basis of the September 2017 report, 65% of the units were in the first four stages of the system, which is before building starts. The first four stages are capital appraisal, pre-planning, pre-tender and tender and 65% were in one of those categories. That means that 65% that are in that programme have still not started construction.

Before Deputy Alan Kelly left his ministerial office, he produced a report on approved projects. Of those approved projects, which had been approved by the beginning of 2016, about 46% were still in one of those first four pre-building stages. In other words, 46% were approved but by the beginning of 2016, they still had not started construction. There is a big problem. Deputy Cowen referred to the need to change the system. We could apportion blame to councils or the Department for the delay. I suspect the blame lies somewhere in the middle and is something to do with communication and delays in sending information from councils to the Department, sending it back again and asking questions, etc. There is definitely a delay and there needs to be a different system.

Deputy Cowen talked about a national system. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has backed the idea of municipal housing. There is the ONE Cork project, with which Cork Deputies will be familiar, which is being promoted as a pilot scheme. It is a start and is something that should be activated. We need something that moves things more quickly than the current system does. Even though the number of stages has been reduced we need something that moves more quickly. What I have tried to do, as I say in my contribution, is to focus on what we can do and what we need to do. We all know the problem. We all have a level of expertise and knowledge at this stage, particularly those of us who participate regularly in housing debates. I would love to see, as a promise for the new year, action in these areas and for something to actually happen so we are not having these debates again months into 2018 or even towards the end of 2018.

See this speech in context