Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister said in his speech that we do not support any of his measures. The reason we do not is that none of the other measures he has introduced has worked. We would not be where we are today if they had. That is the reality and he has to face that fact. The vast majority of people recognise that what the Government is doing is totally obnoxious and ridiculous. Nobody can believe what the Government has done in circumstances where so many people are facing eviction and looking down the barrel of a gun where they do not know where to go.

The following question has been asked umpteen times: where are these people going to go? There is no emergency accommodation and no prospect of them being able to find alternative accommodation, and there are no houses to rent. The Government has done nothing to make this system work and we have a broken housing system. I spoke to a lady earlier this week who told me she received an eviction notice before the ban came in, which will now be come into force. She is in an outrageous situation. She asked me to phone her landlord and I spoke to him. He is 67 years of age, he bought the house during the last boom, for many years it was in negative equity and now that the value of the house has gone up, he has decided he needs to sell it because he wants to retire, his wife is ill and he needs the money for operations and health treatment she will need. He is in a situation where he needs to sell the house and his tenant is in a situation where she will have nowhere to go. She has no chance, hope or possibility and all the Minister says is that if we do not do something about this, we will have fewer landlords in the market. The reason landlords are getting out of the market is that prices are high. It has nothing to do with the eviction ban; the Minister knows that and everyone knows that.

The Government needs to cop on and realise that decent and ordinary people out there need a chance. The chance they need is the breathing space of keeping this ban in place long enough to do what needs to be done and what the Government should have done when the previous ban came in, that is, provide emergency accommodation and get the councils in motion to buy these houses, because they are not buying them. The Minister has talked about the tenant in situscheme but it has not worked and no local authority has done what it is supposed to do under that scheme. We are appealing to the Minister and the backbenchers in government to support the motion and discard the Government amendment. The reality is that ordinary people out there are depending on this Government to do the right thing for once, and this is an opportunity to do that. We are appealing to the Minister to turn this around. The Government will rue the day if it goes through with this.

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