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

I am sure the Minister had reasons for leaving the Chamber, but I am disappointed he is not here to hear what I have to say because the situation is just getting worse. We can bandy around alternative policies and plans until the cows come home but seeing is believing. I want the Government to understand, if it does not already, that the situation has got decisively worse in the past few months. It needs to grasp that. There is real human misery. I emphasise that worsening situation predates the significant arrival of Ukrainian refugees, the outbreak of the war and Putin's brutal invasion. It was getting very significantly worse and towards the end of last year things started to get very bad again. There had been a temporary break during the Covid pandemic because of the eviction ban and the temporary freeze in rent increases. That actually made a difference. It did not solve the problem but it started to improve things. The numbers going into homelessness were falling because evictions were banned.

I want to plead with the Government at present. The main reason people come into my clinic, are facing and then end up in emergency accommodation and, increasingly, are people who are working, have jobs and families and end up in homeless accommodation, is because they are evicted by landlords on grounds of sale. That is why they get evicted. If the Government stopped that, as it did during Covid, it would stop people going into homelessness. I am pleading with the Government to do that. It did not solve all of the problem but it had an impact and since the Government removed that measure the situation has got worse again. Since rents were allowed to increase, it has got worse.

If someone is in that situation where his or her landlord is selling up and the eviction of that person is allowed, he or she has to look for a rent that is affordable. If the Minister of State goes on daft.ieany day of the week, he will see I am not exaggerating in saying that, in my area, he will not find anything costing less than €2,200 a month. Seriously, that is not affordable by about 80% to 90% of working people. It is completely not at the races. People are goosed if they are looking for accommodation at that level of rent. They are facing despair. That is what people are feeling because there is nowhere to go.

When they go to the council, they are told they are not allowed look for anything costing more than €1,950 because of the housing assistance payment, HAP, limit. That is the highest they can get and before that, if they are not on the homeless HAP rate, the highest they can look for is, I think, €1,250. Imagine how hopeless it is for people checking daft.ie or myhome.iewho are told they are not allowed look for a place that costs any more than €1,250 when everything costs €2,200. They can only get the homeless HAP rate weeks before actually becoming physically homeless. That is another thing I appeal to the Minister of State to change; once people have a notice to quit, give them the homeless HAP rate to give them some chance. They still do not really have a chance but they have some outside chance. They might find the needle in the haystack if they get the homeless HAP rate.

The Government has got to do something because it is just not fair. It is mental torture to say to people they have to find a HAP tenancy because there has been no social housing for 15 or 20 years and there is no social house for them, and that they are not allowed look for anything more than €1,950 if they are on the brink of being homeless, when there is nothing available for less than €2,200. That is mental torture. That is what the Government is doing to people with families, children and so on. If they do not find somewhere, which we know they will not, in one case they are going into a hostel in town when one child is going to school in Ballybrack and another is going to school in Shankill. That family will be in a hostel in Gardiner Street. Give me a break. That is torture. It is abuse of those children to put them in that situation but that is what is going on. We have to do something about that.

I am not in favour of giving loads of HAP money to these landlords but, to be honest, the HAP rates have to be raised to at least the levels of the rents that are around. That has to be done otherwise people have no chance whatsoever. I agree with Deputy Sherlock, and I have also made the point, that if people are about to be evicted from a HAP tenancy the council should step in and buy the place immediately. The council is inflicting suffering on itself by evicting people in that situation because they will be knocking on the door of the council saying, "Will you please give me somewhere to live?", when they are evicted from a HAP tenancy. How long has the review of income thresholds been going on for now? Is it five, six or seven years? I know of one woman, as does Deputy Ó Broin, working for a State agency who has spent three and a half years in emergency accommodation and is no longer entitled to income support or HAP support because she has just gone over the threshold. That is now happening to people all the time. They are completely banjaxed because their income will not allow them to afford anything. They will not even get HAP, never mind a social housing unit, and they could potentially be, and some are, evicted from homeless accommodation. It is just unbelievable.

This goes slightly further than Sinn Féin's motion, which I support, but could we possibly do what the French have just done? They have brought in a body that will set rents in each area at a level that is affordable and based on people's incomes. The French have just done it because all the other measures were not working. I propose we do the same.

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