Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to bring forward on behalf of my Independent colleagues our motion on homelessness, which was placed on the clár of the Dáil in December. Every day Deputies are contacted by upset constituents who are at the end of their tethers. These people are trying to look for housing assistance payment, HAP, properties, having been given notices to quit because of sale or refurbishment of the properties in which they are living, they are living in substandard accommodation or they are sleeping in their cars or in tents. There are mothers who are desperately upset with regard to how their children are reacting to the uncertainty relating to homeless accommodation. There are also those who are trying to get deposits together for mortgages and individuals who require urgent housing adaptations. The list is endless. What these people experience is exhausting for them. The Minister knows this as well as I do.

The majority of individuals and families entering homelessness services are coming directly from the private rental sector, having been evicted. Despite the Minister's comments earlier today, we do not even know how many new homes will be coming online and ready for occupation in each quarter. We can only say to families with children who have been in hotel rooms for over two and a half years that they should be getting close to moving out or close to what Fingal County Council calls the "offer zone". It is rare that families are in emergency accommodation for three years or more. We also have no information on how long families have to spend in hubs, such as those in Greencastle Road and St. Lawrence Road in my constituency of Dublin Bay North.

I do not know how many more times and in how many more ways I and other Opposition Deputies - excluding those who are members of Fine Gael's coalition partner Fianna Fáil of course - can provide options and solutions to the Government to address the housing and homelessness crisis. I accept some builds are happening but in very small numbers and they are mainly for-profit units with few if any social housing units. Fine Gael keeps trotting out the failing but glossy Rebuilding Ireland strategy, which places most of the so-called solutions in the broken private rental market. A wide spectrum of Irish society is totally fed up with the tortuously slow response to the citizens and families enduring homelessness, those facing eviction and the tens of thousands on housing waiting lists. The success of the Raise the Roof movement has shown us that almost every sector of Irish society wants and needs change.

That is why our motion calls on the Fine Gael-led Government, propped up by Fianna Fáil, to immediately declare a housing emergency and implement the necessary emergency measures to urgently address the crisis. We believe a key element of those emergency measures should be an urgent return to direct-build by the local authorities and to support them, either individually or regionally, to develop and build out their own landbanks to deliver an adequate stream of social and affordable housing. That direct-build programme in the four Dublin local authority areas should, for the reasons I have previously explained to the Minister regarding the problems that exist in Dublin city in particular, be managed by the Dublin Region Housing Executive.

Our motion also calls on the Government to hold a referendum to place the right to housing and right to shelter in the Constitution on the same day as the local and European Parliament elections in May. We should offer people the vote on the matter and see what they think. The excuse the Minister outlines for not doing so in the Government amendment is pathetic.

We also call on the Government to commit to rehousing families who have been in emergency homeless accommodation, including hubs, for 18 months or more by the end of the quarter 1 of this year and no later. The Government should also commit to rehousing all other families experiencing homelessness by the end of quarter 2 and to limiting the use of hubs and emergency accommodation for families with children to three months maximum. When the hub on Greencastle Road in Coolock started, the Salvation Army informed me that no family would be there for more than three months, but this is yet another promise that has not happened.

We are also asking for increased supports to schools in areas with large populations of homeless families. We come across that every week and we talk to children who are homeless. We call on the Government to provide free counselling to all families and children experiencing homelessness should they wish to avail of the service; to increase the number of available emergency beds and single rooms in dry hostels; and, in particular, to extend the Housing First programme by doubling all targets in the Housing First National Implementation Plan 2018-2021.

I asked the Minister a question on this during Question Time. During the week of 24 to 30 December, Christmas time, according to the official statistics from the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, 3,559 homeless children were in emergency accommodation managed by local authorities across the country. It is shocking and shameful that on Christmas Day, these children woke up in overcrowded homeless accommodation.

At the start of this year, in replies to parliamentary questions on the number of families in direct provision centres, the Minister advised that in 2016 there were 899 parents and 1,219 children in direct provision centres. I also asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, to provide the numbers of parents and children in domestic violence refuges who were ready to move out of supported accommodation but who were awaiting appropriate accommodation. TUSLA was unable to provide the numbers for 2017 and 2018 but did provide the figures for 2015 and 2016. The latter showed that there were 1,736 adults and 2,463 dependent children in refuges in 2015 and 1,520 adults and 2,170 dependent children in 2016.

Based on the Tusla figures, we can assume that there are at least around 2,000 children in domestic violence refuges and with almost 4,000 in official homeless figures and another 1,600 in direct provision centres, the number of homeless children on the watch of the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is at least 8,000, an unbelievable statistic.

The most frustrating aspect for Deputies on this side of the House is that we cannot trust the figures the Minister has given us in the past on the number of new homes built. Last June he revealed that the Government was overestimating new build figures between 2011 and 2017 by over 30,000. He claimed that approximately 85,000 homes were built, whereas the CSO figure put the number at 53,500.

The housing crisis, of course, is most acute in the Dublin City Council region, the local authority area in which most of my constituency lies. Housing output has been miserable in recent years. Astonishingly, in the Dublin City Council area, direct social housing output in 2019 is expected to be lower than in 2018. The February report of the Dublin City Council housing manager shows that in 2019, only 187 homes are expected to be built directly by Dublin City Council compared with 247 in 2018. Only 170 units are to be leased or acquired in 2019 and voids restored will also fall. In total, Dublin City Council housing output will only increase from 5,565 units in 2018 to 5,957 units in 2019, but 3,000 of those, of course, are HAP tenancies.

Part of the constituency I represent is located in Fingal. Fingal County Council is great at sending around press releases but its output from 2015 to 2017 has also been very disappointing. The CEO’s housing report on 11 February shows that only 416 social housing units were delivered in 2018, comprising Fingal direct build, approved housing bodies, Part V and voids. Once again, the vast majority of what the Fingal County Council housing manager likes to call "housing solutions" - 1,243 units out of 1,916 social housing units - were simply HAP and RAS tenancies. Everything is planned for the early 2020s and so on.

The constant backdrop to the suffering of families and individuals on homelessness and housing lists, of course, is the ruthless Irish property market.

Almost all the families I have met going into homelessness were evicted by landlords and their agents. The 2018 quarter four daft.ierental price report again shows the remorseless determination by landlords and estate agents to maximise housing market profits and the inefficacy of the Government's so-called rent caps. As the Minister knows, the sponsors of this motion all voted in this House for a three year rent freeze. Dublin rents rose by almost 9% in 2018 and now are almost 40% above the pre-crash peak. As my old economics teacher and the former Fine Gael Taoiseach, Mr. Garrett Fitzgerald, used to say, the rate of increase is falling but while the rate may be falling, it is still at 10%. Galway rents rose by 13% in the same period, Cork rents rose by 11% and while rents in Limerick and Waterford were 16% and 16.7%, respectively, higher. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are in thrall, as always, to the property market sector and the country’s landlords. They have steadfastly refused to impose a statutory rent freeze, which is now needed urgently.

In December 2018, myself and my Independent colleagues submitted this motion which notes the constant and relentless increase in the homeless figures, except for small reductions in recent months, thanks in part to the recategorisation of some people by the Department. We are asking that action would be taken for the children and families living in unsuitable, overcrowded accommodation, some of whom are engaging in couch surfing and other measures in an attempt to keep a roof over their heads. The majority of the public believes that housing is a human right which should be enshrined in the Constitution. Some people would argue that it is anterior to positive law and is a natural right that does not have to be explicitly referenced in the Constitution but I disagree. We need to specify that right in our Constitution. There are umpteen reports from civil society groups on how damaging homelessness is to children. These reports detail how children's growth and nutrition is adversely affected, as well as their mental health and yet, this Government has sat back and allowed child homelessness to constantly climb. The time for Fine Gael spin has long passed. We need emergency action to address homelessness along the lines of the motion before us today. I urge the Minister to act before it is too late and before he is removed from office in a general election.

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