Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We welcome the Government's U-turn on the winter eviction ban and the announcement earlier. It represents a real change since Thursday when I questioned the Tánaiste on it then. His response was rather lukewarm on the prospect of a temporary eviction ban. We welcome it but we have to remember that for nearly 11,000 individuals and 3,220 children who are homeless and without a secure home that ban will come too late. These figures will only continue to grow after the eviction ban has concluded unless the core problem of a lack of social and affordable homes is addressed because all of us know of so many families who are terrified of being evicted, who are in fear of being evicted or who have just been evicted.

All morning we heard loud and clear the voice of property owners objecting to this ban but we have not directly heard the voices of those affected. One man from my constituency contacted me and he tells me that he is in fear of imminent eviction, he has already been given a notice to quit in the spring and even with a substantial income available to him, he cannot locate an alternative property. He said that one rental property had 700 applications and another had more than 500. He said that any type of extension to his eviction would be welcome as he needs time to locate a new place to live for his family of three. For individuals in that circumstance, including people who are working and people whose incomes may have been sufficient years ago to afford a reasonable rent, a supply of homes is no longer available. There is clearly a serious housing shortage for those on lower incomes and the winter eviction ban, while welcome, does not address that issue.

As my colleague, our housing spokesperson, Senator Moynihan, said, there are three key measures we are calling on Government to implement to address the issues that will continue to arise for those families in fear of homelessness in the spring, after the ban has been lifted. First, we are asking Government to rapidly expand the tenant in situscheme. I am glad that so many houses have been or are in the process of being bought by local authorities; I think the Taoiseach mentioned a figure in excess of 600. However, we need to see a consistent approach across local authorities and to see the five or six months the eviction ban is in place used to ensure that local authorities will map out housing need and identify those households at risk of homelessness. Then the Government should provide councils with the necessary resources to cut through the red tape surrounding the tenant in situ scheme and ensure we can return houses, many of which were originally council houses, to social housing stock and provide more sustainable futures for those renting. Second, the Government needs to invest in building more social homes and to ensure targets are met for that. Third, the Government needs to take on the Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill 2021 Bill that Labour introduced a year ago but which has still has not been progressed and which would have, if adopted by Government, provided much greater security for renters across the country. In my constituency there are twice as many households as the national average in rental accommodation. Many people are relying on the mercy of landlords and they need to have a more stable and secure future.

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