Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

Recently, both the Minister responsible for housing and the Taoiseach claimed progress was being made in the Government’s so-called Housing for All plan. This claim flies in the face of reality given the actual statistics concerning any area covered by the plan. We have a new homelessness emergency on top of the existing crisis. It is a crisis within a crisis, which was partly abated by the ban on evictions during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The number of homeless families grew by 11% in 2021 over 2020. In Dublin last year, 30 families became homeless every week. A total of 786 children have been in emergency accommodation for over a year, affecting their schooling and mental health.

I have raised this issue already and I am sure the Ceann Comhairle is sick and tired of me raising it in the past couple of weeks. Last year, 3,038 households renting were served a notice to quit, mainly because the landlords were selling up. I cannot understand why the Government is not alarmed by it. It was the highest number of evictions of tenants in a single year since the foundation of the State. The trend has continued unabated into this year, but now we know there is another problem on top of it because the family support unit, in response to queries from our office, has said it is at capacity. There is no room in the hubs; they are full. No rooms can be got in hotels or B&Bs. Now we have the quarterly report of the Simon Community, Locked Out of the Market, which states there is not a single property to rent for families with one child identified anywhere in the country based on the standard HAP rate, and just 12 were available on the basis of the discretionary rate. There are now officially 10,335 people nationally in emergency accommodation. In May, there were 7,200 adults and 3,000 children. In October 2019, there was a record number in emergency accommodation: 10,500. The Simon Community has said the number will be surpassed in the next two months while we are on holidays. There will be no opportunity for the Government to intervene if this becomes worse over the next eight weeks.

This is not progress by any stretch of the imagination, as far as I am concerned. As stated in the Private Members’ motion, there is an urgent need to reinstate the eviction ban and introduce rent freezes. I appeal to the Government to achieve this because, in the next eight weeks, families will be in a worse situation. Whatever hope there would otherwise be of getting them somewhere, there will be none. Therefore, there is an urgent situation developing.

On every front, Housing for All is failing to meet the targets set. A target of 33,000 new builds was not met in 2021, 2020 or 2019 and is unlikely to be met this year. Last year, there were 20,433 new units built. That is 12,000 short of the target. An important question is: How many of these 20,000 were actually affordable? Not one affordable one was actually built. Just 65 cost-rental units were actually built. Construction of new apartments was up 30%, to just over 5,000, but they were mainly built to rent and were extremely unaffordable. Two-bed apartments were being advertised in Dublin at €2,250 per month. That is 72% of take-home pay on an income of €50,000, which a large majority of working people do not earn.

With regard to so-called social and public housing, only 3,144 units were built out of a target of 9,000. Even then, 2,000 or so of these were not actually built by local authorities or approved housing bodies; they were given over by private developers under Part V agreements.

In the private rental sector, rents are continuing to rise. They were up by over 8% in 2021. The rent caps are not working as new or refurbished properties are exempted. One could say the Government’s rent caps were designed not to work. Despite Government claims of progress on security of tenure, as long as landlords can evict on the basis of selling or refurbishing, or of a family member moving in, there will be no security of tenure for renters. We now have the Minister asking Departments to look at land in their possession with a view to getting permission to build and then selling it on to developers in the continuation of a housing policy that has failed miserably through its reliance on the private sector. I fully support the motion from Raise the Roof and thank Sinn Féin and the others that have signed it.

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