Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I start by saying something everybody in this House knows. The 1916 Proclamation promised "to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally". The Proclamation refers to "all of the children" but Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and some Independents seem confused. The Proclamation did not say cherish all of the landlords of the nation equally. We are hearing more and more demands to stop demonising landlords, to give them more tax breaks to halt their exodus, while at the same time here we are debating the inevitable cruelty of putting thousands of people onto the streets in the midst of the greatest housing crisis in the history of this nation.

To listen to some people here, one would think that incentivising landlords was the issue and not the possibility of children turning up at Garda stations with no homes to go to and no roofs over their heads.

We are asking only one thing tonight. It is not how many more schemes we should try to develop to lure landlords, developers, builders or vulture funds into our market and not what tax breaks we should try this time for those who are already financially comfortable enough to consider staying in the rental business and making more money. We are asking only one thing, which is whether we should put thousands of people out on the streets starting from 1 April. If the Minister thinks the answer to that is "Yes", then shame on him, shame on his party and shame on the Government and political philosophy that drives it, which thinks evictions are an answer. We are told that an eviction ban will not solve the problem and that we cannot build houses overnight by these two parties which have governed this State for the last 100 years. Try telling that to people like the 100 tenants in Tathony House, some of whom are children, who constantly meet Dublin City Council's management about their issue and are fobbed off, suspended and given no commitment about the buying of that property so that they can stay as tenants in situ. That goes on throughout this country. Clarity is needed for tenants.

Let us be clear that by lifting this ban, the Government will have abdicated its right to govern and rule. It will have put a nail in the coffin of the two Civil War parties. It will have declared to the people of this country that the rights of property, landlords, investment trusts and financiers trump the rights of children to a home and a roof over their head. It will have revealed for all to see that its political philosophy is the inheritor of the political philosophy of Tories and Whigs who evicted Irish peasantry in the 1870s, with the same belief that the rights of landlords and property were paramount. Just as those evictions gave birth to the Land League, I hope the Government's callousness, shown today, will give birth to a fighting tenants' movement. I urge all those faced with eviction to stay put and fight. I urge everybody who abhors this Government's policy to get outside this House at 1 o'clock on 1 April, the day of fools, in this case the fools of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party.

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