Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Many damning facts and statistics show the shameful failure of this Government to address the diabolical housing and homelessness crisis in this country. I will use some of my time to tell the Ministers of State about the human reality of their failures and the misery it is inflicting on people. Watching this debate at the moment is a woman called Jackie. Jackie and her husband are in their late 50s. He worked all his life and worked for a semi-State body. They have two teenage daughters, one of whom has special needs. Tomorrow they are going to be in court in front of a judge. It will probably be the first time they have ever been in front of a judge. The landlord who is evicting them on grounds of sale is seeking a District Court enforcement order to evict them. I want to underline that this eviction, and they are terrified, is happening during a so-called eviction ban. They have done nothing wrong and have paid the rent all their lives but are being evicted from the home in which their children were born and where they have lived since the 1950s. They have no options. Their income means they are over the social housing threshold so they are not entitled to HAP. They are not entitled to be on the council housing list. It is even questionable - because we have come across this and it is uncertain at the moment - whether they will be entitled to emergency accommodation because some local authorities think they are not. They have gone to the banks to see whether there is any chance they could get a mortgage to buy the home that is being sold from under them only to be told that as they are in their late 50s and will be retired when they reach 65 or 66, the banks will only give them a seven-year mortgage that they obviously could not afford to service and therefore, that is not an option for them. We rang the council to ask if there was any mortgage scheme whereby the council could help finance them to help them buy the house from the landlord who is selling it when they have lived there all their lives to be told "No". Every door is shut. They are looking on. They had hoped the senior Minister would be present. I have raised their case on multiple occasions. Jackie has just texted me now to see if there is any chance that a miracle, to use her phrase, might be found before the court hearing tomorrow because otherwise, the family will be living in their car. That is the extent of the failure.

The Government now calls it the tenant in situscheme. It has all these names; it is great. I have been asking for this for four years. I did not call it the tenant in situscheme but I have been calling for local authorities to purchase houses when people were threatened with eviction through no fault of their own. One of the cases that led me to make that call about three or four years ago was the case of St. Helen's Court, where a vulture fund was evicting people. The sale still has not happened despite negotiations taking place. In situations like this, it is again a case of saying sorry but as they are over the social housing threshold, there is no scheme for that so the authority will not and cannot buy. This is unbelievable. You cannot tell people in that situation that you are sorry but you have nothing for them and they can go and sleep on the side of the road but that is what they are being told, so please deliver the miracle Jackie, her husband and her two children need because they are terrified about what they are facing tomorrow morning.

Another case I raised - I do not how many times - involves a young woman with a teenage son in emergency accommodation. They are sharing one bedroom between them. This woman works for a State agency looking after vulnerable children and has been in emergency accommodation for four years yet there is nothing for her because she is a bit over the threshold. They tried to evict her at one stage and we had to fight like billyo to stop her from being evicted from emergency accommodation. There was nothing on offer for her.

Another case involves a couple. The husband was working but then got early-onset Alzheimer's disease, so he cannot work any more. Prior to him getting Alzheimer's disease, they had a HAP tenancy and had to pay a top-up on that. When he was working, they could afford it but now he has Alzheimer's disease, he cannot work, his wife cannot afford the top-up and so they are falling into arrears through no fault of their own but will the Government scheme allow the council to increase the money to pay the rent so this couple do not fall into arrears, which they are now falling into? The answer is "No, sorry, the scheme doesn't allow it" so what is going to happen to them? You can add to that all the people who are paying top-ups. Every time the 4% or 2% happens, the tenants must swallow that up in top-up payments because the Government will not increase the payment. As the new HAP thresholds only apply to new tenancies, the gap between what people are supposed to be able to pay and what they are actually paying is growing all the time, leading to more people getting into trouble with arrears and it is a case of being told sorry but the scheme does not allow it. There is no flexibility.

The question is very simple. Does the Government have a commitment to stop people ending up homeless? It really is as simple as that. It can be as simple as deciding that we are not going to allow this to happen. It is not just about the eviction ban, which should be a no-brainer, although I have just told the House about the many people to whom it does not apply. The Government's position and the instructions to local authorities should be very simple. It should be that we are not allowing anybody to end up homeless and we are going to do whatever is necessary to make sure that does not happen. Nobody should be put through this misery.

I have a pile of cases involving people with extreme medical conditions. There are people whose children have desperate medical conditions and who are seeking multiple consultants and are dealing with the most horrendous situations you could imagine but when they put in for medical priority, it takes ages. Do you know how long it takes to process medical priority applications in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown? It takes about nine months. The suffering people are going through is incredible. The Government could do something about this but it is not doing it. I appeal to the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, to do something about these cases. The Government should stop people being evicted into homelessness, control rents and do something about empty properties. The Government could do these things if the will was there but sadly it is not.

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