Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Níl aon plean ag an Rialtas. It does not have a plan for what will follow for people who are facing homelessness from 1 April. What it presented this week was a series of last minute dot com measures cobbled together, measures which have no hope of meeting the real needs of households facing homelessness from 1 April.

None of us is demonising landlords. We are conscious that small landlords are bearing the brunt of Government failure to ensure an adequate supply of homes for people.

We are not just calling for an extension of the ban. On 9 February, the Labour Party put forward a series of eight emergency measures that we called on the Government to undertake during the duration of a ban to ensure that when the ban was lifted there would be sufficient homes to enable people to move on if they were evicted from their current homes.

The reality is that the Government has no plan in place. The Government countermotion this week refers to a series of measures the Government plans to rapidly introduce. Why were these measures not introduced during the duration of the ban? Why did the Government not engage in modelling? It has no evidence base for lifting the ban.

I want to put a question to the Tánaiste that my colleague, Deputy Ged Nash, tried to put yesterday. How much has it cost the Tánaiste and his Government colleagues to buy the votes of some Independent Deputies in order to evict thousands of people from their homes? This has come at a very high cost to the many renters now facing a cliff edge.

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