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

It is important to remember exactly why the ban on evictions was introduced last November. The Minister knows, given he brought a memo to Cabinet in October that told us there were 19 local authorities with no additional emergency accommodation capacity. It stated that if a ban was not effected, a significant number of single people, couples, parents of children and pensioners would end up with nowhere to go. They would have been forced to sleep rough or present to Garda stations. That is why the ban was introduced. We pleaded with the Government to undertake a series of emergency interventions to ease the pressure on the emergency accommodation system in order that we would be in a better position now, and it refused to do it. In fact, all the things the Minister listed in his contribution, and which his new Minister of State tried to list but got his numbers wrong, were steps the Government was already planning to take before the emergency ban was effected, and on most of those things, it did not meet any of its targets.

In the debates we have had, the Government has given a number of reasons as to why the ban should not be extended. It said the previous ban did not work, which is not true given it reduced homeless presentations by families by 10%, and if it had not been introduced, things would be much worse today. It said we would lose more single-property landlords from the market, whereas the very immediate consequence of ending the ban is that those properties will go. For seven years, single-property landlords have been leaving the market as a result of both positive equity and the dysfunctional management of the private rental sector by the Minister and his predecessors. The Government indicated that extending the ban would disincentivise investment, but the only new investment into the private rental sector is from institutional investors, and they are not affected by a ban on no-fault evictions because they do not evict on those grounds, although, as the Minister knows, those investors are now withdrawing from the market because of rising interest rates. Contrary to the Government's claim that it has ramped up the supply of social and affordable housing, it again missed its targets, which were too low. It is interesting that in all the Government's commentary in recent days, it has not told us how many affordable-purchase or cost-rental units were delivered last year, because when we get the figures, the missed targets will be even worse than those for social housing.

I might respond briefly to some of the steps the Minister said the Government is taking. As Deputy Cian O'Callaghan rightly stated , representatives of the County and City Management Association and departmental officials stated today that the tenant in situscheme is not working, and that is because the Minister has not given a clear instruction to local authorities to suspend the scheme of allocations, have a presumption to buy subject to cost and condition and prioritise the allocation of staff to purchase.

That is why the numbers are so slow. If the Minister does not reform the scheme, those targets will not be met either. In addition, he has not yet extended it to cost rental. Officials in the Department told us today that a decision will be taken soon. The Minister could have taken that decision last year and extended the cost rental equity loan to approved housing bodies. If he had done so, the residents of Tathony House, whose case is regularly raised by Deputy Boyd Barrett, would have been in a much better position.

The Minister stated that he is increasing supply. This is the big deceit of the Government and its predecessor. The reason there is a housing crisis is that, year after year, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have not supplied an adequate volume of social and affordable homes. One third of people in the private rental sector are subsidised by HAP, RAS or rent supplement. The overwhelming majority of those people want to be in social housing. Another 90,000 people, approximately, in the private rental sector cannot afford their rent. They need to be in affordable homes to rent or buy.

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