Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The stated aim of Housing for All is that everyone in the State should have access to a home, to purchase or rent at an affordable price, that is built to a high standard, in the right place and offers a high quality of life. The reality for most falls well short of that.

Every week in my constituency office I have people coming in who are facing eviction. They are frantically looking for a private rental and cannot find one. There is nothing available or very little. Anything that is available is totally unaffordable, in a very bad condition, or both. If people are HAP tenants they are practically ignored by landlords who do not want to know. An investor has bought up his third apartment block in Cavan town and they have raised the rents by 50% in some cases. Those people are going to become homeless if they have not already. Local authorities are unable to assist. There are no bed and breakfast facilities available. Most of them are accommodating refugees. An employee in Cavan County Council contacted over 40 bed and breakfasts looking for emergency accommodation for a person and could not get anything. There are no homeless facilities in Cavan-Monaghan. The nearest is the Simon Community hostel in Dundalk but that is an hour and a half's journey away from Cavan town and there is no bus route.

The funding from central Government for local authorities to turn around vacant homes and apartments, as well as for the maintenance of these properties, is not enough. It is not happening. It is taking a year and sometimes two for vacant properties to be reissued. Before the Minister of State came in the Minister stated local authorities can now buy houses that go up for sale if they house HAP or RAS tenants. I am not being told that by my local authority. I have questioned it and it was told it is not permitted to buy houses, except in very rare circumstances.

There is also a cohort of people slightly above the threshold for social housing. Those people have no support to turn to whatsoever. What are these families to do? The Government recently raised the threshold in four local authorities but it needs to be raised in all of them.

As party spokesperson on disability I mention the reality is even worse for disabled people who are being left to live with aged parents and then moved into institutions or emergency accommodation at the last minute when an aged person passes away. That is not fair on the person who is looking for housing. He or she may have been on the housing list for ten, 12 or 15 years. He or she does not get any choice in where he or she lives. The parents die worrying about their son or daughter. It is totally unfair on them. There is an onus on us to ensure we align with the UN Charter on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and that is not happening. The reality is there is not enough housing for disabled people and what housing is available is often not adequately livable and does not have the independent living supports in place. We need a properly planned and funded housing strategy that is going to deal with homelessness instead of allowing the situation to worsen.

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