Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Healy for bringing forward this Bill. It facilitates the debate which allows us to continue to focus on the housing crisis and the need for a range of measures across the State and the support agencies to tackle it.

An emergency exists in the housing area as agreed by the House when it passed a Private Members’ motion declaring a housing emergency. However, the responses of the State, even at a county level, do not keep pace with the scale of the problem. Imaginative ways of tackling the housing crisis need to be found.

Last weekend, at the Professional Footballers Association of Ireland annual awards ceremony, the Dundalk manager, Stephen Kenny, used his acceptance speech not to speak solely about his achievements or the magnificence of his Dundalk winning team capturing both the FAI Cup and the League of Ireland but instead to speak about the housing crisis. The debate has truly moved from the political sphere and this Chamber to our national consciousness. Stephen Kenny stated in his speech:

It used to be people with addictions but now it is normal families who cannot afford their rent. I think it is a massive issue and the fact that it is not being treated as a national emergency, as Fr. McVerry suggested, is a big disappointment.

Stephen Kenny's remarks were putting it mildly. The housing and homelessness crisis is so serious that it cannot be used as a political football in this Chamber. If a two-page Bill was the answer to our housing crisis, I would have brought it in myself, as would have the Minister. If such a Bill truly helped the people of Navan, Trim or Enfield, I would back it to the hilt. Bills which are clearly unconstitutional, unfortunately, do nothing to help the thousands of people in real and dire need. Despite its good intentions, the Bill is unconstitutional and would not have a positive real-world impact.

We are in the midst of a serious housing emergency which threatens homeownership levels for an entire generation locked into unsustainable rent levels. Fianna Fáil supports any efforts to debate the crisis. However, we have to be clear in our policy responses and not engage in selective grandstanding. While we support the declaration of a housing emergency, the provisions of this Bill are unconstitutional and, alas, do nothing to help. The Bill seeks a three-year termination on any evictions on any grounds and arbitrarily reduces rent in the private sector. We believe the housing crisis demands a more sophisticated and holistic effort to address the private rental and social housing crisis which we face.

Over the past three years when we have debated this issue, all sides of the House have acknowledged everybody involved in the supply of housing must work together. I can never get my head around the continued agenda of the left, particularly the hard left, to come forward with policy ideas which would drive those who we require to supply homes and apartments out of the market. Amazingly, the left thinks this would have no impact. These policies would end up putting people on the streets. The left would make more people homeless not house them. Either the left does not care or it does not think how the real world works. Preventing people from being evicted because they do not pay their rent because the law protects them will have an impact on landlords. They will simply sell up and get out. Such an approach defies belief. It smacks of an ideology of a left-wing college professor I knew strutting around campus thinking the world existed purely inside the four walls of his lecture theatre. It does not.

On the policy front, the elimination of the ultimate right to evict for non-payment of rent or gross misconduct, a significant issue in the private market and council tenancies, would profoundly damage the mortgage market and any other private investment in the construction sector. Why would a developer invest in new housing units if the people who bought them could refuse to pay for them but still live in them? There are significant issues with rents. Every single Member knows that. However, we have to encourage people to build homes and apartments, not introduce madcap laws which would drive them out of the market. Neither should we drive those who finance construction away from projects. If that were to happen, then we would have a different debate in the House about construction firms and developers not being able to access finance because of such laws. Hard left Members always claim they are the only ones who can speak on behalf of families. It is as if no other Member has families in their clinics with housing issues. Deputy Healy would see the same people he has in his clinics at my clinics in Navan, Athboy or Oldcastle. We are actively trying to see proper solutions that result in people getting a key to a home not an eviction notice. I have many young couples with good incomes who cannot get a home. What they need are developers and construction companies breaking ground and building homes.

I often wonder if those in the hard left ever stand on a construction site rather than a picket line. Do they ever get up on scaffolding rather than have a sit-in? Rather than shouting, maybe they would listen to what those who actually build homes require. We all share the same goal. Bringing unconstitutional Bills to the floor of the House for the sake of a soundbite does little to address the call to arms issued by Stephen Kenny last weekend. Rather it scores an own goal.

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