Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I want to first wish the Ceann Comhairle, all Members of the House and the staff in particular, who make it somewhat bearable for us to be in this place, a merry Christmas.

It brings complete shame on politics and on the State that as we face into Christmas, 3,000 children and their mums and dads are either in emergency accommodation, hotels or hubs. Tens of thousands more are the hidden homeless living in chronically overcrowded conditions and suffering all the stress, humiliation, neglect, fears and anxieties of not having a secure, affordable roof over their heads that they can call their own. It truly brings shame on our State.

Deputy Gino Kenny is absolutely right when he says there is a class ideology at work. I know the Minister is well-intentioned and that, within the terms of his own political outlook, he is doing what he can. However, while the Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, said in this House a few weeks ago that while nobody had a monopoly on compassion and that he cared too, he went on to say something extraordinary. He said that people should not expect a free home. Where did a statement like that come from? What would make anybody say that nobody should expect a free home? First, it demonstrates a complete and utter detachment and ignorance when it comes to the meaning of public or social housing, but to say it indicates that he believes that having a council house is having a free home. We hear those prejudices repeated on the radio as well when some of us here are demanding a dramatic increase in the provision of social housing, but for the Taoiseach of the country to echo that sentiment was shocking. There is no such thing as a free home. There never has been. Council housing and social housing is not a free home, but why did the Taoiseach say it? It is prejudice. There is no other word for it and it speaks to the ideological blindness and blinkeredness of the ruling parties in this country which have fundamentally had a problem with council housing for decades.

It is repeated in the notion that we cannot have large-scale council housing estates and that we need a social mix. There is a deep prejudice in that sentiment, that if too many working class people are put together on a council estate there will be problems. That is a disgusting suggestion and it is just not true. If the services, infrastructure, transport, schools, community projects and supports are provided there will not be any problems. The implication is that if working class people are together in large numbers it is a recipe for disaster. This becomes a justification for running down the provision of council housing for decades. It is being done by this Government and was done by Fianna Fáil previously. As Deputy Mick Barry said, a layer of people in Irish society have been profiteering from it all.

Ireland's rich disproportionately get rich from property. They always have. It is another one of the elements of parasitical capitalism we have in this country. We have the tax haven capitalism of the multinationals and the parasitical capitalism of property, with a huge proportion of the Irish rich getting richer on the back of this crisis. That is a fact. For every person who is getting evicted there is a landlord getting increased rent. For every vulture fund that takes over what was public property under NAMA, which could have provided the public housing we needed, there are people who are not doing a tap of work but who are buying shares in these funds and making fortunes overnight. That has been facilitated all the way along the line by this Government.

A disastrous decision was taken by Fine Gael and, shamefully, Labour, back in 2011 formally to abandon the direct provision of council housing and develop a reliance on long-term arrangements with landlords, which finally crystalised into the housing assistance payment, HAP. It was a disaster. We said in 2011 that it would be a disaster. The Government at the time said it would not. When HAP was brought in we were told it was going to work. We told the Government it would not and could not work to say that HAP was social housing and that people could be taken off housing lists and that this would form a part of dealing with the housing crisis. We told the Government that HAP would not work. It said that it would work. It did not work. People in HAP accommodation now are being evicted. HAP is not social housing. It is better than being on the street, in a hub or a hotel, but it is not permanent and secure accommodation and many of those who are flowing into the hubs and hotels are now coming from HAP accommodation. This was the disastrous mistake that was made.

We have to break from these prejudices and understand that we need to go back to providing council housing by the local authorities in large quantities, but this time ensure that the infrastructure and services go with it. In the short-term we need to stop all economic evictions and repossessions of any description now. That is what declaring a housing emergency means. The evictions should stop now. We have to stop the flow into homelessness on the basis that this is an emergency. Emergency measures must be taken to get the thousands of vacant properties out there into use for public housing.

We have been protesting about the direction of policy and warning about where it would lead. My patience has run out, and so has the patience of the people who are suffering this hardship. On 7 April there will be an event which I hope will be on the scale of the water protests, with trade unions, community organisations, homeless groups and political parties in this House mobilising for a national demonstration. I believe that is the only way we are going to force a change in policy from this Government.

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