Dáil debates

Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Anti-Evictions Bill 2018: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

6:20 pm

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to contribute to the debate. Many Private Member's Bills have been brought in and this is an effort to try to deal with the savage fact that there are more than 10,000 people homeless, including 4,000 children, which is shocking. While I might not agree with aspects of the Bill because I do not believe that all landlords are bad, I acknowledge it is an effort to get the Government to move some way. There has been a lot of piecemeal work and there have been almost more Ministers in the past five or six years than houses built.

Deputy Kelly promised the world and all when he was the Minister. Ed Honohan brought forward a Bill and, while I do not want to take away from this Bill, he has the expertise as a Master of the High Court. This Bill was sponsored by Deputy McGuinness, Senator Norris and me. It had the backing of Father Peter McVerry and the Right2Homes organisation.

It was brought forward because the time for piecemeal and clearly ineffective solutions to the mortgage crisis was passed. As stated, the original Bill was sponsored by Deputy McGuinness, Senator Norris and myself. It has been significantly revamped in line with the Standing Orders of the Dáil. The problem is that it was a money Bill, but, in fairness, we looked at it again with Fr. McVerry and many others and tried to organise something. I hope the version of the Bill before the House will pass Second Stage.

We have tabled endless Private Members' Bills and motions. One of our motions on An Post was passed unanimously by the Dáil. The wording was agreed by the Minister and accepted but nothing was done about it, while post offices continue to close. The same is happening in the context of housing. We are wasting a lot of time in here. If words could build houses, we would build many of them and fewer people would be homeless. Will the Minister of State try to engage with the Opposition? The various groups have ideas and come at matters from different angles. They want to help resolve the housing crisis.

Deputy Healy also introduced a Bill recently. We are all trying to do our best but there is a savage inertia in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. County and city councils have completely lost their way in terms of building houses. They built them in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and the noughties but then everything crashed and we cannot get the process restarted. We have announcements of modular schemes and other approaches but nothing is happening. The Minister of State, Deputy English, keeps making announcements and then regurgitates them a year or two later. We turned a sod recently at Glenconnor in Clonmel. That was the second time a sod was turned in two and a half years. I do not think the work there has commenced yet. The project is welcome, although it only involves a small number of houses, perhaps up to 16. We must get small builders and others involved in construction. We must deal with evictions, which are horrific. There is no place for them in modern Ireland. There was one yesterday in Roscommon where, again, thugs from outside the jurisdiction arrived on behalf of a bank. They terrorised an old woman and threw her out on the road. That is disgraceful. I call them a third force militia. They have no place on this island. We must have protections for people. That is why I support the Bill.

I fundamentally disagree with some of what has been said about landlords. We cannot demonise all landlords and state that they are bad. However, we must deal with the situation whereby people are being forced out of their homes. Let us look what has happened with Permanent TSB. A very sick man who is a soldier and whose wife is on sick leave due to stress discovered this week that their loan has been sold on. They were in an arrangement at the request of the bank and were honouring it. I heard some murmurings today that such arrangements will be honoured by the vulture funds. That will not be the case because there is no compulsion on such funds to honour them. We tried to get legislation passed to compel vulture funds to honour agreements but the Government did not accept it. When Deputy Noonan was Minister for Finance, he stated that he would bring in the vulture funds to pick over the dead carcasses. What an awful thing to say. I had respect for the then Minister but that is unbelievable. The Government is allowing vulture funds to evict people and to terrorise them. That is traumatic, even in the absence of violence.

Sheriffs are another group who must be reined in. The laws setting out the powers and functions of the sheriffs are outdated. They have been in place since the previous century. A lot of money goes to service agents and costs are added to those of already hard-pressed homeowners. People want a break. Many of the people who are in trouble tried to find homes for themselves. They did not look for homes from the State. They got loans, found sites and built houses. Now the roof over their heads is being threatened in the run-up to Christmas. While there are celebrations everywhere, people are being threatened with evictions. The thuggery that went on in Roscommon yesterday is going on in every county. It shows vulture funds and banks can do what they like and the Garda often stand idly by. I do not blame local gardaí; I blame the authorities that allow those third force people to operate. They were allowed to park in Balbriggan station one day while they threw a family out on the road. It is totally unheard of. There is no place for that in a modern democracy.

I appeal to the Minister of State to cut out all the talks, meetings, engagements and announcements. He should introduce some real legislative change and adopt Ed Honohan's Bill. However, he will not do that because he does not want to do it. He should try to engage with the Bill introduced by Solidarity-People Before Profit, but he will not do that because he does not want to do it. The Government has all the answers, yet it has no answer as we have 10,000 people on a housing list, including 4,000 children. The Government should be ashamed.

I agree with what Deputy Broughan stated about my erstwhile colleagues. We had a big announcement today when we were talking about Brexit. I understand that Brexit is very important but I do not approve of Fianna Fáil keeping the Government in power-----

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