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

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

The rationale for the Eviction Ban Bill 2022 is as simple as it is urgent. If we do not strengthen and extend the ban on evictions, we are going to see an absolute avalanche of families, individuals and children going into homelessness over the next number of months. That is an unacceptable situation when we already have 11,600 individuals, including children, in emergency accommodation. We have no more emergency accommodation left and there are no alternatives for people who are facing eviction where there was no fault on the part of the tenant. This Bill is saying that where there is no fault on the part of the tenant, where they pay their rent and where they have not breached the terms of their lease, there is absolutely no justification for putting those families, individuals or children into a situation of being homeless because there are no alternatives available for them at the moment. Whatever one may say about the progress of Housing for All, at the moment it has not delivered public and affordable housing, security of tenure or affordable rents necessary to provide people with alternatives. On the contrary, we have record numbers of people homeless.

We have the highest rents and the highest house prices we ever seen in the State. We have about 100,000 families and individuals on housing waiting lists, waiting up to ten to 20 years. We have many people who are not even entitled to social housing because they are over the income thresholds. The delivery of affordable or cost-rental housing is a trickle and is nowhere near what is necessary to provide people with alternatives.

Against that background, it would be simply shameful to allow, as will happen, thousands more families, individuals and children to end up in emergency accommodation or, even worse, homeless without emergency accommodation, when the Government has the power to prevent this from happening.

I have heard the Minister as well as successive Ministers and taoisigh say that we have a policy of preventing people going into homelessness. I do not see that policy. I see absolutely no sign of that policy. It was only under very significant public pressure and the shocking rise in the numbers of people homeless and in emergency accommodation, that forced the Government to introduce a partial ban on evictions in October. It was not a comprehensive ban on no-fault evictions, but one that only covered those where the notice to quit termination date fell within the defined emergency period.

What is pretty shocking about all of this is that it is clear. It was absolutely clear when I raised it with the Tánaiste the other day. He does not even understand what the moratorium does and does not do. I pointed out to him that I was in the District Court on Friday with a family who had done nothing wrong and who were being evicted. The landlord, an owner of multiple properties, was evicting them on a no-fault eviction. They have paid the rent for the home they have lived in all their lives since the 1950s, with their two teenage children. This is a single income family. The husband has worked for a semi-State company all his life and they were facing eviction proceedings in the District Court. The Tánaiste said that could not be the case, because we have an eviction ban. He simply did not understand what the ban did or did not do, although we pointed it out repeatedly at the time it was introduced. Anybody whose termination date fell before the introduction of the moratorium can and is being evicted, even on no-fault grounds.

Our ban is proposing that for the duration of the emergency period, with a review when the emergency situation is over, there should be a comprehensive ban on all no-fault evictions. It should not just be on notices to quit where termination dates fall within the periods, but on any evictions on a no-fault basis into homelessness, while the emergency persists and while there are no alternatives.

Let me be clear in spelling out why there are no alternatives. Despite the Government crowing all the time about how progress has been made in Housing for All in the delivery of public housing, it is very telling that the Housing for All quarter 4 progress report has no figures on the construction of new council houses, for example.

The Minister is shaking his head, so he can give them to the House. What we do know is that in the first two quarters of last year, zero new council houses were built in Dublin. The Minister will say the Government delivered social housing, by which he means housing assistance payments, HAPs, or that the approved housing bodies, AHBs, bought some properties and so on, but it is not building council houses.

The Minister goes on about the Land Development Agency, LDA. The LDA has not delivered one new public or affordable house. The first development where it will deliver is in my constituency and, my God, that tells a story about the failure of successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments. We in People Before Profit have been campaigning for that site to be developed for public and affordable housing for 15 years, since it was handed over, as the old Shanganagh open prison, to the local authority. The first sod was turned this year and the first house will be delivered sometime probably towards the end of 2024. That will be the first LDA house. That is the level of progress from the LDA.

On affordable housing, Housing for All promised 4,100 affordable and cost rental houses in 2022. At the end of quarter 2 of 2022, the Government had delivered 235 affordable houses and 234 cost rental houses. It is absolutely pathetic. In the entire country, by the end of the second quarter of 2022, only 1,500 new local authority builds had been delivered.

What is the human cost of all this, of the Government's failure to take emergency measures? A couple who had a HAP tenancy are paying €2,700 in rent, a massive top-up such as that which many people are resorting to because they cannot get anywhere else. When the husband was working, the couple could manage that top-up, but then he developed early-onset Alzheimer's disease, so he is not working anymore and they do not have the means to pay the top-up on this extraordinary rent. Now, therefore, they are €2,700 in arrears. If those arrears persist, the couple will face eviction. Imagine that. This is somebody with Alzheimer's disease whose wife is his carer. What is the Minister going to do about?

Likewise, there is the family I mentioned who are over the threshold and, with their two kids, face the imminent prospect of eviction. I have raised this case many times and we have talked to the local authority. We asked whether the State can acquire properties to prevent people going into homelessness where they face the imminent threat of eviction, even if they are over the threshold, and we have been told by the local authorities that we cannot do that. We are told that because of cost rental equity loan, CREL, funding, it cannot be done. Why would we not step in to prevent somebody being made homeless in those circumstances? Another young woman has lived for four years with her teenage child in one bedroom in emergency accommodation. She works for a semi-State body looking after vulnerable children and she is still homeless four years on.

The Minister cannot let more people end up in that position. He has to take action. There are many more things he has to do, and while extending the eviction ban is not the solution to everything, it is an urgent stopgap to prevent a dire situation getting even worse in the coming months.

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