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

I thank Deputy Healy for bringing forward the Bill. It is very important that an emergency be declared in the light of the current level of homelessness, the rental increases outlined in the daft.ie report in recent days and the slow pace of housing construction, particularly social and affordable housing.

It is an emergency. Nearly 4,000 children are homeless. If that is not an emergency, I do not what an emergency is. I suggest that the declaration of an emergency can be a practical and effective way of dealing with a crisis. In 2008, the bank guarantee was passed in this Chamber following a late sitting. We opposed it, but it went through. The effect of that measure was to guarantee the banks with the support of the nation. The debts of the banks were basically put on the backs of the people. If we had a home guarantee instead of a bank guarantee, would it not make a difference? Is it not more important to guarantee that people have homes than to include financial institutions, including the ones that caused all of the problem, in a bank guarantee? If we have values, surely it is more important to guarantee homes than to guarantee banks. If we were to pass a Housing Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill to accompany the various Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bills we passed in the last decade, would that not make things happen? Have we not reached a position where we need to do something much more dramatic than what we are seeing from the Government?

I fully support the principle that underpins Deputy Healy's main proposal in this legislation. While there are issues with various other parts of the Bill, they could be amended. I will refer to some of them later in this contribution. I genuinely think we have reached a point where we are in an emergency. It seems quite incredible that at a time of what is normally described as near-full employment, with a recovered economy, we still have a hopeless housing situation. We hear people using phrases that suggest things are getting better and are working, but there is no evidence in what we are seeing on the ground that this is the case. We have come to a point where we have to say that this is a housing emergency. If we do that, we can take actions that we would not take in normal times. I believe such actions are needed. We have come to a stage where we must put the right to a home into the Constitution. I know that legislation to that effect has been considered by the House. I suggest that housing must be given the central position it needs to have to become the priority of the Government and of public policy. That is where we are at and that is what we must do. We have to balance the rights in the Constitution. Private property rights are constantly trumping the rights of people to have a roof over their heads. There was evidence of that in last month's budget when Fianna Fáil happily clapped in support of measures that support developers and landlords rather than tenants and people who are trying to build a house or to afford to buy a house.

I have described the main substance of the legislation as I see it. The rent pressure zones are not working. I welcome the Minister's statement that he is preparing a Bill, although I am not quite sure what will be in it. Maybe the Minister of State, Deputy English, will enlighten us a bit more. We have rent pressure zones. According to the daft.iereport - I accept that I am not referring to the Residential Tenancies Board report - the average rent in Dublin increased to €1,968 in the third quarter of 2018. How can anybody on a low income afford almost €2,000 a month, or approximately €23,000 a year? It would take up practically their entire income. The average rent in my own city of Limerick, which is not a rent pressure zone, has increased by 20.3% to €1,151. We are constantly chasing the average. In order to attain rent pressure zone status, there must have been a percentage increase in four of the previous six quarters and the average rent must be above the national average. As rents continue to increase in Dublin, the national average now is €1,334. We are chasing that figure all the time. We will see whether Limerick city, or at least part of it, is included when the next review is conducted on the basis of the Residential Tenancies Board figures. I would be surprised if all of the city were to be included. The rent pressure zone system is based on local electoral areas, which means that part of the rural hinterland of the city is taken in as well. Unfortunately, we have been proven to be correct in what we said when the rent pressure zone legislation was going through the House two years ago, just before Christmas 2016. We all wish the system introduced under that legislation was working. We are dealing with people in our clinics every day who are terrified that they will lose their rented homes because they cannot afford their rents and are worried they will increase.

We have to protect tenants. There are measures in this Bill to protect tenants. We cannot say that there can be no evictions whatsoever. In fairness, if people have not been paying their rent for years - even in local authority tenancies - there has to be some provision for eviction. The same should apply in cases in which people are wrecking the homes they are renting. I would amend the legislation in that regard. We have already made proposals in respect of the evictions that happen when properties are sold or given to the landlord's grandson or whomever. People should not be put out of their properties for those reasons.

While I have some issues with this Bill, I agree that overall, we have reached a point where it is needed. We need to build homes. The Labour Party has proposed that €16 billion be spent over five years to build 18,000 social and affordable homes and we have said where the money would come from. It is mad to put €500 million a year into a rainy day fund. Even though we have people with no homes, we are putting money away in case we might need it in the future. Where are we putting it? We are probably investing it in something that is totally useless to us anyway. We are probably borrowing to get the money in the first place. There is no logic to a rainy day fund in the current situation. We must face up to the fact that we have a very serious problem. It does not seem to me that there is much evidence that things will improve in the near future. We are still looking at vacant homes all over the place. I got an email from my local authority today relating to a property in a private estate that was bought by the council and has been empty for six months. I was told in the email that the local authority cannot afford to do it up because it does not have the money to do so.

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