Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I would really appreciate it that the Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council or whoever needs to be contacted, is contacted as a matter of urgency and told that a cocooning place must be made available for such people. They cannot be put somewhere where their health will be put at risk. They are not vaccinated yet and so on. They got a doctor's letter today confirming all of this. It really would be unacceptable if that were the case. That is my first point.

We will, of course, support the Residential Tenancies (No. 2) Bill 2021. Insofar as it extends a small amount of protection to a very small cohort of people who self-declared that their income loss as a result of the pandemic has affected their ability to pay rent and that the protection against eviction and rent increases has been extended, of course we will support that. Similarly, we support the measures the Government has taken to put into legislation what USI has campaigned for on students having to pay only one month's deposit and so on. I welcome those developments and therefore we support the Bill. We are more than willing to say that, when the Government is doing something progressive.

However, it is not opposition for the sake of opposition to say this. I will not use one of the most tired clichés that we hear in this place about missed opportunities. It is almost criminal neglect that Residential Tenancies (No. 2) Bill 2021 is not doing more to protect all tenants - not just a tiny cohort of a few hundred - against unfair evictions or no-fault evictions.

Figures from TCD and Focus Point in the last week or two indicated that 38,000 people in this country have been through homeless services since 2014, which is estimated to be 1% of the adult population. I have a personal friend in that situation. I have repeatedly raised with the Minister an entire block of tenants in St. Helen's Court in Dún Laoghaire who are facing that. These are working people who have done nothing wrong. They pay their rent and are good tenants. It is a lovely community with elderly people, new communities and working people like taxi drivers who have had their income affected but will not qualify for the protection of this Bill. They pay their rent anyway because they do not like being in arrears of their rent. They are going to be put out on the street. I have been pleading with the Minister and with officials in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to prevent this from happening. I repeatedly hear the Taoiseach say that the Government wants to prevent people from going into homelessness. Most of the people who are faced with homelessness are being evicted from the private rental sector and most of them have done absolutely nothing wrong, but there is no protection for them.

We have pleaded with the Minister and I plead with him again. We have proposed amendments to the Bill to this effect. We should extend the protection for all tenants against no-fault evictions at least until the pandemic has fully passed. We also need to use the interim to stop no-fault evictions altogether. Why should people who pay their rent be evicted? The Minister frequently mentions the "mom and pop" landlords and that they can be treated as an exception, but not the default position. We have legislation where the default position is that it is acceptable to evict people who have done nothing wrong.

The default position should be that they should not be evicted unless there are exceptional circumstances which justify the kind of individual landlord the Minister is talking about having an urgent financial or other need to sell. Other than that, landlords should not be allowed to evict tenants when they have nowhere else to go. It is just not fair for 1% of the adult population to be going through homeless services with all that entails. We cannot allow this situation to persist. It is brutal and inhumane.

It is equally unacceptable for the tenants who in my area are paying €2,000, €2,500 or €3,000 for two-bedroom apartments. Those who are single can forget it. Many of the people in St. Helen's Court are single. They are paying €800 or €900 in rent which is a lot for people on a moderate income. When they go looking for somewhere else in Dún Laoghaire, they will not get anything for less than €2,000 for a one-bedroom apartment. They will end up on the street. The local authority says, "Sorry, we have nothing for them." Will they be sent into North Frederick Street in a few weeks' time? These are ordinary decent working people. It is not right. These people are vulnerable with health conditions and other things.

I plead with the Minister to do something now - not carry out a review, but do something now - to protect tenants from an 8% increase in rent on top of the €2,000 or more they are already paying. These people have a real terror that they might be made homeless and they need to be protected. The wheeled-out justification of saying, "What about the mom and pop landlord?" pales into insignificance compared with people being put on the street. That is not opposition for opposition's sake. I am saying those things because I meet those people who are crying and shivering with fear wondering what on earth they are going to do. It is just not right.

We have tabled amendments to the Bill. We will support the Bill. Given that the Bill is to be guillotined in any event, I do not expect that the Minister will accept them, although he should. However, when is he going to protect these tenants? We are talking about tens of thousands of people who are in constant fear. These people have been working all their lives but their income is insufficient to pay the unaffordable house prices and they have been on a local authority housing list for 15 or 20 years. The average waiting time in my area for council housing is now in excess of 20 years which is unbelievable. They have nowhere to go if they are evicted.

I know the Minister will say this is not all his fault, which fair enough as he is a new Minister. However, in my view it is his fault if he does not do this. While this unacceptable situation, which is the legacy of successive governments, pertains, if we want to stem the flow of people into homelessness, the first thing is to say that we must not put people out on the street. We must not allow a further increase in rents on top of already unsustainable rents. The Government should immediately bring in long-term protections for people against no-fault evictions and introduce real rent controls.

In other jurisdictions across Europe people regularly control rents; they do not just stop rent increases. A rents board or a local authority determines a maximum rent for a particular property. Will the Minister not introduce those kinds of rent controls? He may say he cannot because of the Constitution. Even though I am not sure that is true, we have introduced a right-to-housing Bill that seeks to address that and the Government could fast-track that Bill so that we can have the real rent controls we urgently need.

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