Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. I will say something to my Sinn Féin colleagues who are bemoaning the absence of the Minister after 20 minutes - at least he turned up for their debate. He was not present for any of our housing debate a couple of weeks ago. Maybe he will be here for at least an hour of People Before Profit's Bill on the same issue tomorrow morning. We will build it up from there.

The motion is concise and simple. As Deputy Ó Broin stated, it will not solve the housing crisis or build more houses. It is an emergency motion to combat an emergency situation. It puts a finger in the dam of further evictions, which would add to the already record number of people in homelessness.

I will make a couple of requests of the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan. On the Order of Business, the Taoiseach told our leader, Deputy Bacik, that the eviction ban would be reviewed within two to three weeks. I ask that the review, such as it is, take place urgently and the results be stated soon. I hope they will show that the ban can be extended. Two to three weeks would take us up to St. Patrick's Day, which would be two weeks shy of the ban's first cliff edge on 1 April. We all know what happens around the Oireachtas on St. Patrick's week, that being, very little. We must ensure that St. Patrick's week does not become 24 to 26 March. Tenants are already boxing up, bagging up and preparing for 1 April, but they are also hoping that the Minister of State and the Government will extend the ban. I ask that the review be held as quickly as possible and that the Government announce an extension of the eviction ban as soon as possible. That would be a great help. No one is calling for an eternal ban on evictions, and we understand that it has to be time limited in some manner, but such is the scale of the crisis that it is unconscionable that the eviction ban not be extended.

As well as extending the ban, we need to examine its operation. The eviction ban, such as it is, is having limited success. I know - I am sure the other Deputies present also know - that there are people who are staying in tenancies because of it, but there are those who still find themselves homeless. The Taoiseach said that this is down to familial relationship breakdowns, private rental agreements coming to an end, etc. It was a throwaway remark, but this eviction ban is aimed precisely at ensuring that those in private accommodation not fall into homelessness. While no eviction ban can account for relationship breakdowns, domestic violence or emergencies that we hope will only cause temporary homelessness, nothing speaks to why the numbers have increased since the ban came into place. I ask that the ban not only be extended, but that we strengthen it in order that it works better than it did this winter.

We have been speaking about the tenant in situscheme, which is another element of the motion, for a number of weeks. It is another finger-in-the-dam policy. It does not create a new housing unit or otherwise increase stock. It just keeps people from entering homelessness. It does not take anyone off the homeless list or the housing list and put him or her into a new property. It is being inconsistently applied, to put it mildly, across the country. This is not good enough when we have a Minister who cannot spend his budget and there are local authorities dragging their heels and being bureaucratically resistant to the scheme. I do not believe that anyone is fully happy with the scheme at a time when we do not have high-volume delivery of public housing on a consistent basis. However, we are where we are and we need to ensure that the scheme can work quickly and some flexibility is applied to it. As those of us who run busy advice clinics and represent people who are in homelessness or at risk of homelessness know, each case is different and has a unique fingerprint. Rigorous schemes are being applied to fluid, different and difficult situations, but we need flexibility within the tenant in situscheme. If there are people with a three-bedroom need who are living in a two-bedroom house or vice versa, we need to ensure the tenant in situscheme can apply to them. The alternative is that a family with such a need will present at their local authority homeless desk, throwing themselves on the mercy of the State and into a period of homelessness where they do not know if they will be split up or where they will receive emergency accommodation, assuming they receive any. Their uncertainty will continue. The tenant in situscheme came about on foot of a ministerial memo last July. It needs stronger impetus from the Government, and the Government needs to hold local authorities' feet to the flames.

I was dissatisfied not only with the content of the Minister's response to the motion, but also its manner. It did not reflect the manner in which the motion had been presented. Similar to our motion a couple of weeks ago, this motion genuinely seeks to provide solutions to various elements of the housing crisis, focusing specifically on the eviction ban and the tenant in situscheme, which are practical emergency stopgap measures. What we saw from the Minister was more of a "Prime Time" or "The Pat Kenny Show" debate rather than a response to the contents of the motion. That was unfortunate and did a disservice to all those in this situation.

While we will support the motion and the extension of the eviction ban, we also want to see the introduction of monthly reporting by each local authority on the tenant in situscheme, with adequate reasons given for the purchase of rental properties not proceeding. There is enough documentation in each assessment to allow for monthly reporting. We need to see an emergency building programme for public housing that uses the full resources of the State, but what we are seeing at the moment is delivery through Part V. My constituency of Fingal is seeing developments and estates being built, but the Part V deliveries within them are nowhere near enough to meet housing demand.

If I may, I will digress for a moment. A bugbear of mine is how, through variations, what is put forward in the initial planning applications to meet developers' Part V obligations differs considerably from what is actually delivered. The applications have a pepper-potting of public housing, be it affordable, social or cost-rental, under the scheme.

What we see in delivery is perhaps two apartment blocks in the far reaches or corners of a scheme that are given over to local authorities and labelled as social housing or public housing. That is not proper Part V delivery. We need to row back. Ultimately, Part V delivery is what got us into this mess. We need to see a proper public house-building scheme, and the Land Development Agency, LDA, needs to actually work and deliver. We must commence rapid compulsory purchase of vacant and derelict properties by local authorities, with targets for each, and mandate the LDA to issue compulsory purchase orders and assemble smaller sites for owner-occupiers and co-operative housing developments.

I wish to speak on accommodation for international protection applicants. The Labour Party has strong concerns about the profiteering we are beginning to see, with people who want to profit off the misery of people feeling the impact of war entering this space. They are buying properties, trying to flip them over to the State at a high profit and see this as a cash cow, rather than as a compassionate policy to ensure that we provide sanctuary for people. I believe that all of us in this House see the policy in that way. We will return to this matter in the coming weeks as we pick up more information on the ground. I put to the Minister our concern that we are seeing not the extension of accommodation for international protection applicants but, rather, the extension of direct provision and actors in that space in whom we are not confident to deliver what we need for these people.

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