Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Last week on Leaders' Questions I described the position of a 58 year old woman working 39 hours per week at an Alzheimer's disease support centre. She applied to go on the housing list a number of years ago but she earned too much and was above the cap for the Dublin City Council list. She was in rented accommodation for 14 years and in October she and her partner, a 64 year old man, found themselves homeless because their landlord served a notice to quit on the basis of selling the property. They ended up living with her brother and his family, which has caused much tension in the family home. The woman and her partner move out every so often, telling her brother they are going to a friend's house, but they end up sleeping for perhaps two nights in a car to get out of the house and give her brother's family some relief.

This woman has reduced her hours of work at the support centre. I made it clear to the Taoiseach that this woman gets up early in the morning to go to work but she had to reduce her hours from 39 to 28 per week to get on a housing list. Workers are finding themselves in dire circumstances and must act to get themselves on a housing list. These people now have no hope of getting private rented accommodation because their income is so low and they are at the end of a housing list. She told me she was No. 384 on the list.

That is one situation.

Another situation in Crumlin involves a block of apartments bought by a vulture fund that then issued an eviction notice to all the tenants because major renovations were to take place that would take three to four months. They were down in the office last week and we saw that one of the termination notices was worded wrongly so we will take it to the RTB. As the previous speaker noted, this is just buying time so that these tenants can possibly get other private accommodation, which is very hard to do. It will be practically impossible for those families to get somewhere, but at least we will try to buy them a bit of time and see what happens. If push comes to shove, those families have to decide whether to accept being evicted or stay in these apartments because they have nowhere else to go.

A young woman came to my office this morning having been made homeless yesterday and put into bed and breakfast accommodation last night. She had to leave that bed and breakfast at 9 this morning with three children, one of whom is only three weeks old. She was wandering the streets and ended up in our office wondering what to do. Imagine putting a family with three children, one of whom is a three week old baby, out into the cold today. One would not put a dog out into it but she was out wandering the streets trying to find accommodation. When we speak about things like this, we must talk about what is happening to many people on the ground and take it out of the bubble here in the Dáil. This is happening all over the country. It is not just happening in my constituency. We eventually got that woman more permanent accommodation in a hotel in Parnell Street in Dublin at 4 p.m., so at least temporarily she will not have to leave early in the morning with her three children, roam the streets for a day and go back to a bed and breakfast at 9 p.m.

That is the reality of the housing crisis and it is an outrage. This did not just happen today or yesterday. It was happening when people like Deputies Boyd Barrett and Durkan and I raised the crisis that was unfolding in front of our eyes in 2012, so there has been plenty of time to try to address the issues. Yet again, we have a Government that is content to tinker around the edges of this crisis when what is needed is urgent emergency and radical action. This Bill comes nowhere near that. It is typical of the Government's approach - too little, too late. It is playing catch up. The Government changes something, we then see the complexities and loopholes and we have to come back with more legislation. It is a case of too little, too late, and we cannot upset the landlords and developers. This Bill will not lead to fair rents or security of tenure in rented accommodation.

Three things are required to fix this. We need a properly enforceable rent cap. Rent caps should be tied to the average rent in a particular area or some equitable way of dealing with those rents. No evictions should be permitted except for non-payment of rent or the use of premises for criminal or serious antisocial behaviour, and there should be an end to spurious claim of wanting the premises back for a family member, renovation or because the property is being sold. We need serious measures to combat illegal evictions. My office has dealt with numerous cases of illegal evictions over the past two years. I said last week that we are at the RTB every week with a different case representing tenants facing eviction.

The measures in the Bill are welcome but they are not enough. We need a significant increase in the supply of rental units, which will not be achieved by developers, who are sitting on zoned land waiting for the new height regulations to come in. The Government must move to a policy of public housing on public land using the cost recovery model to provide fair rent homes with security of tenure in addition to local authority housing under the differential rent scheme. A total of 70,000 cost rental units and 30,000 council houses could be built on existing zoned State-owned land. This would provide real competition in the market so beloved by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. The private sector would be forced to provide fairer rents and greater security of tenure if it wanted to compete with the State sector. I will not be opposing this Bill but I think it needs serious amendment on Committee and Report Stages to give it teeth.

I reiterate what Deputy Barry said. I understand that ICTU is holding a press conference tomorrow at 11 a.m. in the Oak Room in the Mansion House to announce a plan of action over the coming year as part of its Raise the Roof campaign for public housing. One of the actions will be to call a conference on 30 January in the Communications Workers Union Hall on the North Circular Road to discuss how to launch a campaign and not a campaign that just involves demonstrations. This must be a campaign on the ground involving how we highlight lands that are available on which to build cost rental units and public housing on public land and how we take action to make sure the lands that are there are used in a way that will make a difference to our communities. Those who want real solutions to the horror of homelessness and the shortage of housing should look to that campaign and not to a Government that has failed miserably on this issue.

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