Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the Labour Party motion on housing and homelessness. I wish that party had had the same interest in tackling those issues when it was in government and it adopted the very policies that created the crisis in housing that we now face. The current Labour Party leader and then Minister with responsibility for housing was one of a sorry line of disastrous Ministers in that post. The policies enacted by that Fine Gael-Labour Party Government were essentially about protecting the same vested interests Fianna Fáil had allowed to destroy the economy in the first place. It was about protecting the corporate landlords, speculators and bankers. In their term in government they introduced a new toxic vested interest to our housing policy in the form of the vulture funds.

We have a new Government in place and a new Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government. I congratulate him on his appointment and wish him the best. The sea change required by Government if we are to address our housing crisis is a willingness to stand up to those vested interests that have capitalised on the housing situation that so many families face.

We recall that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael told us there could not be a rent freeze. There is one now and the only question that remains to be answered is how long it will last. We were told there could never be a moratorium on evictions. There is now and question that remains to be answered is how long it will last.

This Government and its predecessors bought the lies the banks sold that they had to profit from the pandemic by charging interest. I commend Deputy Doherty. Primarily through his work we learned that that has been proven to be a lie despite the protestations of their spokespeople in recent times. Because it has been proven categorically to be that case that banks do not have to charge their customers interest or to profit from this pandemic as they are intent on doing, the only question left is what the Government will do about it.

What needs to be done? In the first instance, the banks need to be told by Government that they are not to fleece their customers who have had to go looking for a payment break. If they do not adhere to that instruction from Government, the Government needs to be determined to implement Deputy Doherty's legislation that will put an end to it.

The rent freeze needs to remain in place not for three months or six months, but for years until we get a grasp on our dysfunctional rental market. The moratorium on evictions needs to remain in place. We have heard the experts and the people who are on the front line of this tell us that the moratorium has prevented homelessness. We need to build from that. We then need the radical housing action policies as proposed by Deputy Ó Broin and ignored by successive Ministers. We need a radical public house building programme to be put in place. If the Minister does that, he will have our full support.

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