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

I will begin where Deputy Barry ended in appealing to people to take to the streets on 1 December in what is the follow-on demonstration from the 3 October mobilisation outside the Dáil. It is the anniversary of the death of Jonathan Corry, who died yards from the entrance to the Dáil two years ago. Shamefully, the crisis that contributed to his death has continued to escalate. I thank Deputy Healy for putting forward this Bill calling for a declaration of a national emergency and for emergency measures to deal with the housing crisis. It is not the first time that has been put forward, yet the Government continues to vote them down and defend the indefensible failure of its housing policies that have created this crisis, particularly the NAMA policies, the abandonment of the construction of council housing when it first came into power and, more recently, its continued reliance on vulture funds, real estate investment trusts, REITs, and the private rental sector to solve a crisis that it created and that it is exploiting now, jacking up rents, evicting people and speculating on land and property.

Why should people protest? Last Monday morning in my clinic, but it could have been any Monday, Elaine came in. She has four kids. She got a notice to quit in April, being evicted on the basis of one of the loopholes that the Government failed to close because the property is being sold. She has gone through all the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, appeals and will be homeless very soon. She went to the council, which told her to find a place to rent on housing assistance payment, HAP. The limit for HAP is €1,800 or €1,900 per month, but rents in Dún Laoghaire are €2,200 or €2,300. We asked if she could get an uplift. The answer was no. She cannot even get the homeless HAP until she is almost homeless. The council has known for months but it will not give her the homeless HAP until she is about to become homeless. Months have been wasted in between. We do now have a placefinder service, but it cannot find a place because there are no places.

The next person who came in was a mother with a two year old child. She burst into tears, crying helplessly in front of us, begging us to get her out of the hub in Monkstown she has been in for the past year. She cannot take it any more, psychologically and emotionally. She was pleading with us to see if there was any way she could get out of this place.

I then got a call from a mother, distraught about her son. He is working in telecoms, he is highly qualified, and his wife, a hairdresser, is also working. They are over the limit for social housing so they applied for the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme. They were refused because they cannot demonstrate the capacity to repay. They have the deposit and a clean credit record. The scheme for people earning between €35,000 and €75,000 a year does not work. The mother told me 67% of people applying for that are being refused. What the bloody hell is the point of this scheme?

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