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

I thank People Before Profit-Solidarity for introducing this Bill, which we are supporting, and for providing us with the opportunity for this debate. The Government has been in office for over two and a half years and the facts of the Minister's record in housing do not lie. During that period the private rental sector has continued to shrink at a more accelerated pace than under his predecessor, former Deputy Eoghan Murphy. The social and affordable housing targets, which are too low in the first place, have been missed for three years in a row and homelessness is at the highest level since these records began.

One of the most startling facts is that homelessness has continued to rise despite the introduction of the emergency ban on evictions last November. One of the reasons is that it does not have the same strengths as its predecessor, the ban introduced by former Deputy Eoghan Murphy during Covid. In fact, in the first three to four months of that eviction ban the number of men, women and children in emergency accommodation fell by almost 60%. When the current Minister is comparing so poorly with former Deputy Eoghan Murphy, one of the worst housing Ministers in the history of the State, that really is a record being broken that is nothing of which to be proud. When members of the Opposition come into this House and make very genuine and reasonable propositions, both about extending the ban and taking additional emergency measures, the Minister's responses do not add up. I want to go through some comments he made last night and again today.

The primary reason we need to extend the ban is that the Minister has not done the kinds of things that front-line homeless service providers, homeless policy experts and the Opposition urged him to do at the end of last year. With respect to tenants in situ, the Minister did give the local authorities an instruction last year to use their delegated authority to reconsider purchases of properties with housing assistance payment, HAP, or rental accommodation scheme, RAS, tenants in situwho had been given notice to quit. However, what he did not do was instruct the local authorities to suspend the scheme of allocations and have a presumption to buy, subject to price and condition of property. As a consequence of that, the response of the local authorities has been confused, piecemeal and inconsistent. I wrote to the Minister not long after he gave the local authorities delegated authority and set out very clearly what I thought was a more effective way of getting the local authorities to accelerate the purchase of properties but he ignored that. As a consequence, what is a very good scheme has not been utilised to the extent it could and should have been and I urge the Minister to reconsider the propositions I made to him last year.

Since last year we have also been asking the Minister to extend the tenant in situscheme to affordable cost rental. In his response yesterday he seemed to suggest that somehow we were proposing that he give a carte blancheto local authorities to buy homes for €500,000 but we were proposing nothing of the kind. We want the Minister to apply exactly the same criteria as apply for the cost-rental equity loan, which is the scheme for approved housing bodies, AHBs, to purchase such properties and within the rules of that scheme allow local authorities and AHBs to explore and where appropriate purchase properties such as Tathony House, for example. That could be done en blocor it could even be done on a case by case basis.

We also asked the Minister to use the emergency powers at his disposal and he threw back at us that he introduced the Part 8 derogation last year. We did not oppose that but we were not enthusiastic about it either because it will not deliver a single extra home this year. In fact, of all of the things the Minister could have done to accelerate the delivery of social housing, that was the one thing that will make either no or very little difference. The local authority managers are telling him that, as are local elected representatives and members of the Opposition. It might save four or six weeks on a social housing project but in fact any of the homes being delivered through that provision will not actually be on site until next year and will not be delivered until the year after that. As a consequence of the Minister's ham-fisted actions, he will generate huge tensions with local communities, elected members and the management. If that is his idea of an emergency intervention, it clearly shows the extent to which he does not understand the crisis.

The Minister has also said that there is no cliff edge but that is not true. It is the case that there is a staggered extension of the notice to quit but a very large number of notices will fall due on 1 April, either for people who were able to benefit from the ban on evictions over the winter or people who get no benefit from it whatsoever. The suggestion that there will not be a cliff edge again speaks to the fact that the Minister just does not understand the problems we are talking about. I am pleading with the Minister, in his engagement with the Attorney General and Cabinet colleagues, in as quick a time as he can, to make a decision and extend the ban and crucially to introduce the kinds of emergency measures we are all proposing here today so that the breathing space he gets from an extended ban can be used properly to ensure we are not here again in December.

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