Dáil debates

Wednesday, 4 May 2022

Rising Rental Costs: Motion [Private Members]

 

9:00 pm

Photo of Réada CroninRéada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am at a bit of a loss after listening to the Minister of State. This morning, I was contacted by a constituent in her 60s who told me she slept in her car last night. Every housing case coming into my constituency office in north Kildare is just getting worse, with every one more unbelievable than the last. Eviction notices are arriving thick and fast. I have had more people with notices to quit coming into my office in the last month than I have had since I got elected. I was not a bit surprised by the dramatic increase in the RTB figures. The Minister must implement the Focus Ireland motion, which passed through this House unchallenged, without delay.

I have lost count of the number of people being asked by the system that was created to house them if they have friends or family they can stay with. Here they are, citizens of this State, and they are meant to depend on the luck of having somebody who might be willing to put them up. I know another woman aged 60 who is camped out on a sofa. The family dog had to be moved from his spot to make room for her to have a place to sleep. Older people are being made homeless and the stuff they have gathered through their lifetime is being dumped or stacked in a friend's damp shed - the sheer cruelty of it.

Rents are rocketing in north Kildare. The €1,400 cited by the RTB is way lower than what is being asked in the northern part of Kildare, in my constituency. One would not have a snowball's chance in hell of getting a place for under €2,000. A house in Mullen Park recently went for rent for €3,500. It is the same desperate people chasing the same shrinking number of properties available to rent, and they are desperate. This is all the Government's doing and it is hard to believe we tolerate it. The Government has turned housing, something that every human needs, into a profit commodity for investors. All this mess is of its making.

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