Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

"Rent price inflation hits record 14.1% on back of 'extreme shortage of extreme shortage of rental homes"; "Housing starts fall again in October ... [as costs rise]"; "‘Housing crisis is putting education system at risk,' say unions ....". Those are a flavour of the headlines we woke to this morning.

Yesterday was a typical Monday for me, and probably most other Deputies, as it started with a weekly clinic. One young women with three kids and a partner was at her wits' end. She received an eviction notice in October. She is out of her rented home in April with nowhere affordable to rent. She is going to have to split up the family. She has been on the council housing list nine years and there is no sign of anything from the local authority. Another woman is single and living in a substandard two-room flat in a building with three men. She is scared stiff with fear because of the aggression and intimidation she must experience from one of them, and the landlord does not care. She has nowhere else to go because there is nowhere else to rent that is affordable. At the rate of building she could be on the housing list for at least another four years. That is the time it took to house somebody, from their application to the conclusion of the process, when I became a public representative back in 1999. Sometimes it took three years but it was four at the higher end. Most heartbreaking of all was a case I dealt with directly last week. A women and her two young children were being evicted from their home. They are on the council housing wait list a few years. In order to help, I found myself speaking over a period of days with the woman's son, who is a young child in his teens. He was advocating for his mother. Since last week he and his sibling and their mam are some of the 11,000 people who are homeless in Ireland. I am certain the Minister agrees no child should have to grow up that fast and take on the responsibility of advocating for his family who are being made homeless, but it is the reality. It is where we are now and it is shameful.

Despite this, the Government still refuses to mouth the word "emergency". "Crisis", "disaster", "emergency" - Ireland's housing situation is all these things. We need only ask the people I do my best to represent. It is nothing short of a catastrophe for them. I do not care what it is called. I do not think anybody in here really cares what it is called, and how we describe it, so long as it is fixed. However, it is not getting fixed and it is nowhere close to being fixed.

The Taoiseach's response to Deputy Bacik's questions at Leaders' Questions today was revealing. The Labour Party leader had the temerity to remind the Taoiseach it is the Government that bears responsibility for ensuring everyone has an affordable and secure home. It is a role the Government is failing to perform. Deputy Bacik welcomed the Government's U-turn on the adoption of Labour Party policy on an eviction ban and rightly welcomed last weekend's reports of impending, if belated, changes to income limits for local authority housing. Yet the Taoiseach bizarrely hit back by claiming we had no plans to fix the housing crisis and we were not being constructive. Just because he does not like our plans and does not agree with them does not mean we do not have a plan.

The Taoiseach is running out of road, as is the Government, and the facts do not lie. Housing for All simply is not delivering the rate of building we need and now the Taoiseach has resorted to blaming the Opposition for the abject failures of Government housing policy. You could not make this up. It is absolutely delusional. A plan with an underspend of almost €500 million in a year when we will see the ignominy of the highest rates of homelessness ever recorded is not a plan that is working. A plan that has in the year to date failed to spend €228 million of the money the Dáil allocated to the housing budget this year for council housing is not a plan that is working.

A home is not an investment and should not always be viewed as a commodity. The Government must stop seeing housing primarily as something the market will fix as a commodity and an opportunity to merely profit, which for too many it is. I will share another experience from my constituency with the Minister. Just two weeks ago in Drogheda we rumbled a landlord who was openly advertising up to 20 bunk beds for rent in what was a standard, slightly extended, family home. The price was €500 per month for a bunk bed in a room shared with three or four other people in a house that would be absolutely rammed. At our behest, the council intervened and took a form of action. That disgusting, greedy enterprise has now collapsed, but with record rents to collect and no explicit laws on overcrowding, in that there is no legal definition, there is nothing to stop someone else from trying this on. This is the reality of housing in this country in 2022.

It should come as no shock to the Government that these failings on housing are being exploited by far-right xenophobes across Ireland for their own disgraceful ends. The Government has overseen rents rising by 14% in one year and all it takes is a look at the Government's own recent report to see that Housing for All is failing, and failing ordinary working people. We know 11,000 people are recorded in informal homelessness figures and that is rising. Some 60,000 people are on social housing waiting lists. There will be more when the income thresholds are adjusted, as they ought to be. Housing insecurity is pervasive across all parts of Irish society. Even those we assume to be well paid are crippled under the weight of the rental sector and the most vulnerable are drowning in it.

The State has abdicated its responsibility and placed its trust disproportionately in private landlords and the private sector, that is, the market, to deliver. However, only the State has the authority, scale and mandate to crack an emergency of this scale and seriousness and definitively deal with it. It is why we said in our alternative costed budget, which we produce every year, that an additional €1.5 billion should be spent next year on social and affordable housing and ramping up cost rental. The State must revolutionise its approach by drastically scaling up and prioritising social, affordable and cost rental homes, reducing its reliance on the private sector, moving HAP tenants into social housing and bringing an end to no-fault evictions.

Our support for this motion goes way beyond the demonstration organised by my colleagues in the trade union movement on Saturday. It goes way beyond ending no-fault evictions and far beyond a rent freeze and eviction ban. It goes to the very core of Irish housing policy. The Labour Party and our fellow Opposition parties are calling for a fundamental shift in how the State views housing. There will be no tinkering around the edges because that has all been tried. It must be a fundamental shift, for that is what is required. We make no apologies whatsoever for affirming housing is not an investment but first and foremost, and always should be, about a home. We will always prioritise the rights of tenants and people to safety, warmth and shelter over the ability of landlords in the private market to make a fortune passively off the backs of vulnerable people.

The State has a moral duty to care for its people. It is the very essence of the social contract; it is the glue that binds that contract together. People agree to abide by the norms of society in return for protection and the vindication of their rights. When the State fails to vindicate their rights, the Government cannot expect everyone to be quiet and docile and to move on. We therefore urge everyone to join us, our trade union colleagues and everyone who is serious about a step-change and a revolutionary change. It is a change that should not be considered revolutionary but it is nonetheless, when compared with the policies of this Government. We want everyone to join us to raise the roof on 26 November in Dublin. We must show the Government something simple, namely, that Housing for All is failing whether the Government likes it or not. The evidence shows that. The experience shows that. The State must step up and build the homes we need, reduce rents and value housing as a home and not an investment.

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