Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Fáiltím roimh an deis páirt a ghlacadh sa díospóireacht. Tá rudaí dearfacha sa Bhille ach cuireann sé olc orm nach bhfuil comhthéacs ar bith maidir leis an ngéarchéim atá ann ó thaobh chúrsaí tithíochta. Mar is eol don Teach, tagaim ó chathair na Gaillimhe. Tá na figiúirí ó thaobh cúrsaí tithíochta i nGaillimh damanta. Tá deis ag an Aire ceannaireacht a thaispeáint. In ainneoin go bhfuil rudaí dearfacha sa Bhille seo, tá an Rialtas i ndáiríre ag cur tuilleadh srianta ar thionóntaí tráth a bhfuil géarchéim tithíochta ann.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. I have gone through the Bill and once again I thank the Oireachtas Library & Research Service, which does an excellent job in educating Deputies. I come from Galway city and I have repeatedly put on the record that housing there is equally bad if not worse than in Dublin. I will deal with the Bill in a second but I need to put it in context. COPE is an organisation that deals with homelessness in Galway. In 2019, 1,622 people availed of homeless services in Galway. I am waiting on a text to confirm whether my memory is correct regarding somebody who came into my office who was on the waiting list for more than ten years and has been going from bed and breakfast to bed and breakfast for almost two years with a young family. Of the 1,622 people, 1189 are adults and 433 are children. I could go through the statistics.

Osterley Lodge caters for women who are homeless. According to a report by COPE, one woman said before she arrived at Osterley Lodge she had been sofa surfing for 18 months and that she had been in Osterley Lodge for 11 months and finding accommodation in Galway city was near impossible. The report also states domestic abuse is an epidemic and one in five women in Ireland will fall victim to this crime at some stage of their lives. They are not counted in the homeless figures. This is the context in Galway city. It is difficult to get the exact figures. The Minister knows that since Fine Gael and the Labour Party introduced the housing assistance payment scheme in 2013 and 2014 anybody who falls under it comes off the waiting list. From my long experience as a local councillor, and I have kept in touch with the issue, anything up to 12,000 or 13,000 people are on a waiting list in Galway for a public house. We have a serious crisis in addition to the pandemic.

What the Minister is doing will provide extra protection for some tenants, which I welcome, but in the guise of extra protection for some tenants he is withdrawing protection for other tenants and this is simply unacceptable. There is no recognition of the pandemic. There is no recognition of the housing crisis or having a home as of right. I would have thought that particularly Fianna Fáil, and I have great respect for it with regard to public housing, might get in touch with its roots and realise the housing crisis cannot be solved without an absolute commitment to public housing on public land as an integral part of its plans. Tenants and, quite clearly, landlords deserve to be treated with respect and properly under the law. I have no difficulty acknowledging that we need landlords but we need the State as the primary landlord to send out a message to the market that a home is not a commodity. A home is something that is the most basic fundamental right that should be enshrined in our Constitution.

Speaking of the Constitution, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael misused the Constitution to justify their action because the Constitution also acknowledges that the common good is an extremely important objective to serve. The Minister is not serving the common good by increasing the number of evictions among the tenants he is not protecting. He is not serving the common good by relying on the market to provide homes. This is not serving the common good. In my humble opinion I have no doubt there would be no constitutional problem if the Minister sought to enshrine a home as a basic human right in our Constitution.

I welcome the extension of the notification period for all tenants to 90 days in the Bill. The Bill is very short and it appears that what the Minister is really doing is limiting the scope of the moratorium and the scope of the rent freeze. Quite clearly, a house in Galway cannot be got at the levels set under the housing assistance payment. It is just not possible. We used to have under the counter payments are now we have over the counter payments. As the Minister well knows, families or individuals in receipt of the housing assistance payment get money that is capped and they must come up with money out of their own pockets. What the housing assistance payment is doing, and I have said this so many times, is backing up private market rents to a level that are simply not affordable for anyone.

The Bill is an opportunity to look at putting this in context rather than limiting evictions and the rent freeze in a time when we have a serious housing crisis. Many organisations have spoken out. The Simon Community has spoken out and while it was positive, as I am myself, with regard to some aspects of the Bill, it points out that it does not believe the Bill provides the required level of protection to vulnerable renters. It also states the Bill will not protect those tenants who could be made homeless because the landlords require the properties for their own use or wish to sell the properties.

No more than the debacle at Dublin Airport and the unacceptable divisive approach of the Government in singling out people on the pandemic universal payment or the jobseeker's payment, it is doing the exact same here with our housing problem.

We have the hims and hers and the landlords on that side and we Deputies on the left ostensibly complaining. That is not part of my philosophy. We need landlords and we must protect them properly, but we also need absolute protection for our tenants. The rights of landlords and tenants must be enumerated in a constitutional framework where the right to a home is protected. Protections should follow from that, with the Government right in the middle of the market, i lár an aonaigh, ag cur in iúl do na tionóntaí agus do na tiarnaí talún go bhfuil sé dáiríre faoi chúrsaí tithíochta agus gurb é an chloch is mó ar a phaidrín teach a sholáthar do dhaoine ionas go mbeidh siad in ann páirt a ghlacadh i gcóras daonlathach.

I will not use all of my time. I will finish, but I appeal to Deputy Darragh O'Brien as a new Minister. Many mistakes have been made, including the debacle at the airport and the divisive approach. Let us stop this and unite on what is important. Providing a home as the most basic and fundamental requirement is an essential. Let us lead. Let the Taoiseach and the Green Party lead. The Government has its moment and we will support it. Recognise that there is a crisis as we did with climate change so that actions can follow from that, not just a tinkering with the market or a charity approach. It is a basic human right. We all need homes so that we can participate in society.

In that context, I have serious difficulties with what the Minister is doing in this Bill. Although it will do one or two good things, it will actually reduce protections for tenants.

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