Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Labour Party motion; the Social Democrats will be supporting it. I also welcome the comments from the Minister that he will listen constructively to any proposals from the Opposition and others throughout the House.

There is little awareness of the emergency rent supplement. There has been some uptake, but I and others have been dealing with many people who are not aware of it. We are creating a problem of rent arrears because people who could be accessing that support do not know about it. I appeal to the Minister to have a public information campaign on a similar scale to the other aspects of the public information campaign on Covid. We have had advertisements on the emergency rent supplement in the newspapers and elsewhere but not on this scale. That is needed as it will prevent a longer term problem building up.

I want to make three key points. I agree with the calls to extend the moratorium on evictions and rent increases. We need to realise that evictions resulting in homelessness are not inevitable. They are a consequence of policy and can be prevented. That is one thing we need to focus on. The Government can implement a range of policy options to address that. We must learn from the mistakes made with rent and mortgages in the past ten years. We also need to look at best practice in other countries.

I draw the Minister's attention to a report on mortgage arrears, entitled A Lost Decade - Study in Mortgage Possession Court Lists in Ireland, published by NUI Galway. I am sure the Minister and others will be familiar with it. I want to focus on two recommendations in that report. The first is a recommendation that human rights and equality training should be provided for directors of the Central Bank and for State-appointed directors of other banks. I raised this in a parliamentary question to the Minister for Finance who has responsibility in this area. I got detailed information back from the Minister on it.

It is clear from the answer that while there is some training on diversity for employees and different aspects, the core human rights training that is needed for the directors to realise the impact of decisions that are made in large banks and in the Central Bank on people's human rights in terms of mortgages, arrears and evictions is not being done at present and needs to be done. The importance of this is to create a balance so that in making these decisions while people are looking at the financial aspects, they also need to look at the human cost. This should be a core part of their thinking. I urge the Government to implement that recommendation from the report.

The report also recommends that the Minister for Finance should request a quarterly report from the Central Bank along with the quarterly statistics on mortgage arrears. That report should outline the impact of Central Bank decisions on housing rights issues and the disproportionate effects its decisions and supervisory actions have on women in particular. We should not just be looking at the financial numbers in this; we should also be looking at the human impacts. I urge the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, who is present, to say that to his colleague. All of these things have a cumulative effect.

I wish to speak about the sale of mortgages to vulture funds. The Government should be seeking to prevent mortgage holders from having their mortgages sold on to vulture funds. In Germany mortgages cannot be sold on to vulture funds without the consent of the mortgage holder. If that is done in Germany, there is no reason that the same protections cannot also be afforded to people in Ireland.

In terms of the impact that evictions have on people, tackling high rates of evictions and repossessions makes good economic sense. There is abundant proof that preventing evictions is cheaper in the long run than rehousing people after a period of housing exclusion or homelessness. In Finland it has been shown that the cost of an eviction is between €7,500 and €8,000 a year, which is much more than the cost of preventing an eviction. That should be at the core of our thinking on this.

Research has also shown that victims of home loss frequently experience feelings of painful loss, continued longing, a general depressive mood, symptoms of psychological and social distress, and a sense of helplessness. There are particular negative impacts for children in the loss of home and the experience of homelessness arising from evictions when the problems of rent arrears and mortgage arrears are not dealt with.

Research shows that two years after eviction, mothers still experience significantly higher levels of material hardship and oppression than their peers. One study of 2,000 Swedish households showed that those who had lost their legal right to a home where a landlord had applied for eviction were approximately four times more likely to die by suicide. There is evidence of significant levels of eviction among individuals with complex support needs due to mental ill health and substance abuse.

The European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless has described eviction as:

[...] one of the worst forms of violence that can afflict someone [...] Eviction is not only a punishment, it is a collective abandonment of other people; prioritising one individual’s right to own property over another individual’s most basic needs [...] Eviction is a humiliating and traumatising experience, which risks pushing the victim down a slippery slope towards destitution and poor self-esteem. It constitutes a violent rupture of one’s home life that directly feeds into the problem of homelessness.

There are positive international examples of good practice at which we can look. For example, prevention of evictions has been a part of social policy in France for many decades. Mortgage lenders in France are held liable for their irresponsible lending and, accordingly, there are much lower levels of mortgage repossessions. A similar level of accountability should happen in Ireland and the Government has a role to play in that.

In Spain, tenants of small-scale landlords may seek a suspension of rent payments during the pandemic crisis and if they are unable to reach agreement with their landlord, they can avail of interest-free loans. Those tenants continue to pay their rents with the loans to be repaid over a period of six years. For tenants of large-scale landlords with more than ten properties, if the tenant and landlord cannot reach agreement on a postponement of the rent, the landlord is required to either cut the rent by 50% for the duration of the crisis or accept a suspension of rental payments for the crisis period with the rent then repaid over the following three years without interest. We need to look at similar schemes in Ireland.

I want to mention three principles that we should agree on. While we need an extension on the moratorium, we should first look at the rental sector and getting rid of most of the grounds for eviction. We need to be strong on the point that the private rental sector provides people's home first and foremost, and those properties should not be financial or investment assets. Those considerations are secondary.

We need absolutely to prioritise that there should be no evictions into homelessness. Several EU countries already have a policy of never evicting families into homeless and we should have the same policy in Ireland. In many countries, such as Scotland and Germany, the courts must notify the local authority and social services immediately of any impending eviction so that rehousing can be arranged. We should have a similar formal arrangement in place in Ireland.

We also need mediation and payment plans where evictions are being looked at and evictions should only ever be used as a last resort. We must support tenants and landlords to reduce the risk of evictions.

The Social Democrats fully support this motion and look forward to the work the Minister will do on this issue in the coming months. We will work constructively on this with him and other parties in the House.

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