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

I raise the increasingly desperate plight of many at the sharp end of the housing disaster. I am not just speaking about the 11,000 people we now know are on the homeless list, including many thousands of children. That is bad and shocking enough as a figure, but there are many more living in precarious accommodation, facing eviction and who do not know where they will have to move to.

Last week I raised the plight of residents of a shared house in Rathmines Road in my constituency faced with an eviction notice where a landlord wishes to sell, with no inkling of where they will be able to move to. Today, I raise another group of people in my constituency, a stone's throw from where I live, in the ironically named Liberty Lane off Camden Street. I commend Kitty Holland in The Irish Timeson writing of their plight this morning.

I visited Liberty Lane this morning. There is a prefabricated structure that looks like a temporary office block in which 27 people live. These 27 people are being charged between €500 and €600 per month and are sharing three toilets, two showers and one kitchen in a prefab structure that is now being closed down as a fire hazard. They work and study here, and contribute to our economy. They are people from other countries who cannot source appropriate accommodation anywhere in Dublin. This is one example of the sharp end of the housing disaster.

Yesterday the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, revealed that the rental market has shrunk by 43,000 homes in the last five years, with many landlords seeking to exit the market. That gives a clear picture of the acute and desperate crisis facing renters. There is precarious accommodation, in many cases unsuitable or inappropriate. If ours was a functioning housing system, many of those in such precarious accommodation would have been housed in public housing on public land. Instead, we saw four wasted years between 2016 and 2020, where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael squandered prosperity and did not put investment into building the necessary homes.

What can be done now? Yesterday, our colleague, Senator Moynihan, in the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage asked the RTB if it could alert local authorities to renters in receipt of housing assistance payment, HAP, or rental accommodation scheme, RAS, so those individuals could be prioritised for the tenant in situscheme. In other words, the RTB could assist councils to ensure people are saved from homelessness where there is an eviction. We got in response from the RTB a confirmation that this was not in its power to do and it was a matter for Government to make a change in policy to require it.

I raised this last week and the Taoiseach told me the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage was examining the matter of the tenant in situscheme and whether the RTB and local authorities can work together to address the issue. Will he give us an update on the issue?

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