Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

People in north Kildare are contacting my office and they are terrified. They cannot sleep. They are sick to their stomach that once the eviction ban is lifted they will have nowhere to go. In Kildare there are 209 evictions pending yet there are only 44 places available to rent on daft.ie. Across the State there are almost 5,000 evictions pending, and 1,183 places available to rent. Primary school level maths tells us that 209 will not go into 44, and that 5,000 will not go into just over 1,000. The people who contact me are worried sick about their families and worried about telling their children. They feel like failures. I tell them that this is not their fault and that the fault lies fairly and squarely at the feet of this Government. What is the Government telling them? Is it that the private market will look after them, as the Government has expected for the past 12 years? You must be joking. It is not the private market's job to find homes for people. The Government talks about demonising landlords; well, it was ye who set this up by expecting private landlords to do the Government's job to provide homes for people who should be homed by local authorities.

I put it to an tAire that almost 5,000 eviction notices have been issued across the State. This will affect multiples of people. We are talking about tens of thousands of people. If they were affected by an earthquake or a flood we would have international agencies coming here to help them. Maybe we should, because our housing crisis is turning into a humanitarian disaster. Lifting the eviction ban is purely political and ideological. It comes from the Government's politics of private profit first, and people and public service last.

I have asked the Minister what help the Government will give to people who are trying to store the stuff they have around their homes. Will they have to lose that? I have also asked if the Government is going to help people to board their pets. Imagine having tell your child that not only are they going to be homeless but they will have to lose their favourite pet as well. Is the Minister really that indifferent to people's suffering? It is loss on loss and cruelty upon cruelty because of the Government's laissez-fairehousing policy.

There is speculation that Fine Gael took this to their focus groups and that their hard core voters told them "Off with you, we are alright Jack, do not worry we will still vote for you." Be warned, a Aire. Ireland is small country. There are only two or three degrees of separation here. Everybody is going to know somebody affected by this. Eviction resonates with Irish people. We all learned about it in our history books. I appeal to the back benches of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party to find their moral compass: the Cabinet has lost theirs. Members need to vote with the Opposition and keep people in their homes. The Government needs to withdraw its counter motion. The time for that was when the eviction ban was brought in. If it needs the cover of the eviction ban why is it doing that? I ask the Government to withdraw its counter motion.

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