Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I support this motion of no confidence in the Minister. He is presiding over a housing and homelessness emergency. This is no accident and no error, but the result of deliberate policy pursued by this Government and previous Governments. This policy sees housing as a commodity and the market as a solution to the housing and homelessness crisis. That policy has failed, was always going to fail and will continue to fail. The reason the Minister refuses to tackle this housing and homelessness emergency, the reason he will not commence a large-scale construction of public housing on public lands, the reason he will not provide significant affordable purchase and rental schemes and the reason he refuses to freeze rents or to stop families being evicted into homelessness is that he is part of an extreme free market, pro-super rich Government.

The right to housing is a human right. This Minister and the Government, however, are treating housing as a commodity on the market, and that has resulted in the biggest housing and homelessness crisis since the Famine. The policy of the Minister and the Government on housing has been criticised by the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, who said housing is stability, security, dignity and, crucially, housing is not a commodity. The Minister's policy is damaging children, families and society in general. Indeed, the result of the Minister's policies, as we have seen only this afternoon, is another increase in the homelessness numbers for October. There are now 10,514 people homeless, and one in three of those is a child. Homelessness has increased by 354% since September 2014. Since the appointment of the Minister, the number of people homelessness has increased from 7,300 to 10,300.

Rents have also skyrocketed during this Minister's tenure. In Dublin, average rent is now more than €2,000 and rent nationally is up 8% compared with the same period last year. One in five renters pays more than 40% of income on rent. Housing assistance payment, HAP, tenants pay an average top-up to landlords of some €200 monthly, in addition to their local authority rents. These figures are unsustainable and mean these tenants do not have 2 cents to put together at the end of a week. An illness, bereavement, communion, confirmation or an unexpected bill can and does drive these families into debt and, indeed, into long-term debt.

A generation of young families are locked out of ever having a family. Thousands of these families are just above the limit to get on a local authority waiting list for a home. At the same time, those families will not qualify for a mortgage. They are condemned to paying long-term exorbitant rents. Even families lucky enough to get on the local authority housing list face reviews and removal from those lists if their income has crept over the income limit. I have seen cases where families with only social welfare income have been removed from local authority housing lists. We have the 77,000 people on those lists and 37,000 families on HAP, with no security of tenure and paying exorbitant rents.

There are also thousands on no lists. Those are the hidden homeless, living with family or friends or sleeping on couches. The Minister's housing policy is not only a failure, it is a disaster for families and for society. It has broken the social contract between the Government and the public. The housing and homelessness emergency can only be tackled successfully by the declaration of a statutory housing and homelessness emergency, by the building of an emergency large-scale public construction housing programme on public land, by large-scale affordable purchase and affordable rental programmes, by the freezing of rents at significantly reduced levels and by ensuring that sitting tenants have the right to remain on as tenants in situations where properties are being sold. To implement these measures requires the removal of the Minister and the Government and I support this motion.

See this speech in context