Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party for introducing this motion and giving us the opportunity to have this important debate. While there might be some minor differences on the details of the policy proposals, we are more than happy to support the motion.

I do not know where to start. At an earlier stage in this Dáil, I was one of many on the Opposition benches who would have given the Minister of State the benefit of the doubt. I would have said he was a decent person who meant well, but what he is saying is not true. Even he does not believe the remarks he read out. The fact that he could hardly make eye contact with any of us as he read the script he was given demonstrates that he does not believe it. He said that substantial progress had been made. Let me describe that substantial progress. The Government has been in office for two and a half years, which will be half of its term if it goes for the full term, and the situation has never been worse. House prices are higher than they have ever been and they are continuing to rise. Private sector output exceeded its expectations last year, but commencements were down in the last quarter of the year and it is unlikely that we will see much progress this year. Rents have never been as high and are still rising, and for six years in a row, the private rental sector is contracting. There is no action or plan from the Government to address any of this.

This week, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage launched yet another glossy brochure - 32 pages long, it was issued late in the evening - telling us about all of the progress in quarter 4 of last year except for two crucial points. There was no update on social housing targets for 2022 and there was no update on affordable housing delivery. For all his sins, the former Minister, Mr. Eoghan Murphy, at least included the figures when he published his quarterly updates and he put himself in front of a committee for questions, which is something that the current Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, studiously avoids doing.

When we get the figures, we will know that it will not have been the case that the Government exceeded the historic high of social housing output of 1975, when 8,800 real social homes were added to the stock. At most, the Government hit 7,500. According to the Minister and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, it was 6,500. I suspect it was somewhere between the two. Regardless, it will have been far off the highest number of real social houses in the past 50 years.

Regarding affordable housing, it actually looks like the Government might not have delivered a single affordable purchase home last year. In my constituency, some had been laying vacant since August, but because the Department could not sort out conveyancing and legal issues with the banks, they were not purchased until the start of this year. The cost-rental scheme is in crisis. It will not have met its targets last year and will not this year either.

Not only have we the highest levels of official homelessness, but all other categories of homelessness have gone through the roof as well. Approximately 18,000 people are in various forms of emergency accommodation funded by various Departments or none at all. This is not even to mention the rough sleepers. The fact that homelessness is increasing at a time when the Government has introduced a ban on evictions should send alarm bells ringing like never before. We know the reasons for this. We are not getting a consistent approach to the tenants in situscheme. We have not had the circular from the Minister to local authorities insisting on the presumption to buy that I called for last year. The tenants in situscheme is not being extended to cost rental so that residents in properties like Tathony House can avoid eviction. Crucially, we are not getting an emergency response from the Government mobilising emergency powers in planning, suspending procurement rules and using new building technologies to increase and accelerate additional social housing units during the period of the ban. Mr. Eoghan Murphy was no great housing Minister, but at least when he applied a ban on evictions, it was also a ban on notices to quit. The current Minister could not even do that. Not only will there be a cliff edge come 1 April for the notices in the system, but the fact that landlords have been able to continue issuing "no fault" evictions during that period means the cliff edge will be deeper and more dangerous for thousands of people.

We need an emergency intervention. We need the kinds of measures outlined in this motion, including the extension of the ban on evictions. Crucially, we need increased and accelerated delivery of social housing. If we do not get that quickly, we will be looking at official homeless figures of 12,000 or 13,000, never mind all the other people the Government refuses to count and acknowledge in its figures.

It is time for the Minister to spend less time launching glossy brochures that tell us nothing, tinkering around the edges with existing schemes and avoiding Oireachtas scrutiny in this Chamber and at our committee and to accept that his plan is failing and we need a change in approach. Without that, the situation will not only not get better. It will get much worse.

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