Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Two and a half thousand children will be homeless this Christmas. They are children living in hotels and emergency accommodation and families with no kitchen to cook in or dinner table to gather around. For some of them, it will be the second Christmas in those conditions. They are tough memories that, we now know from multiple reports, will stick with them throughout their lives. There are others, some of whom I am dealing with, who have a home and a roof over their heads but who have an eviction notice facing them. They are unable to find anywhere they can afford before the eviction notice comes due at the start of next year, and they face homelessness unless the Government takes action.

All the Bill, which I very much welcome, seeks to do is to give these people a chance by giving them three months to find a home before being thrown out in the street. It is one small step that could be taken. The Government says it does not lack in will and that it will do this or that about it but, as has been noted, it has been in power and could have done this at any point in the past. If it does it now, I will believe it when I see it.

We had before us an experiment regarding one simple way to reduce homelessness when we introduced an eviction ban. What happened was the number of homeless people dropped quite rapidly. It did not drop to nothing but it dropped quite rapidly. The eviction ban was then lifted at the behest of landlords and under the guise of the Constitution, and homelessness numbers began to rise a month later. We know what needs to be done, namely, to implement, for example, the People Before Profit Anti-Evictions Bill 2021 to give renters real security of tenure.

This Government of Scrooges does not care about renters. According to Dickens, it took three ghostly visits to get Ebenezer Scrooge to see the error of his ways. There is no sign of such a recognition by the Government. The only thing that will force it to recognise the problem and do something about it is a mass movement. We need a mass protest on housing in the spring.

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