Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Last week, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party voted against a humane and common sense Aontú amendment, which sought protection for cohorts of vulnerable people in the context of eviction. The parties voted against a tenant or a member of his or her family who has a disability being protected from eviction. The parties voted against a tenant or a member of his or her family who has a terminal illness, a cancer diagnosis, who has suffered from a stroke, has advanced heart disease or who suffers from mental health issues being protected from eviction. Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party also voted against a tenant who is pregnant or who has a very young family being protected from eviction. The Government even voted against pensioners, people in the later years of their lives, being protected against eviction. Many of those people have no other opportunities for housing and are extremely vulnerable, yet they are exposed by the Government to the worst excesses of the housing crisis. That is an incredible thing, that the Government did not even have the humanity to protect that small cohort of individuals. Indeed, the Government was in fits of laughter during the actual vote that took place on the day.

One of the hardest things to get my head around at the moment is the lack of evidence the Government is providing for its decisions. I have seen no modelling, evidence or information provided at any stage by the Government to show what impact its policy would have on the housing market. No information has been provided by the Government to show that the policy it is pursuing would provide X number of extra homes for rent in the coming two, three, four or five years.

I was involved in a debate with a Minister last Thursday night on RTÉ and the question was put to him over and over again on whether modelling, evidence or any information was given to the Cabinet on the decision it made on this issue. The Minister basically said there was no information or evidence used to support the decision. That is an incredible indictment because it means the Government has made an evidence-free decision on this critical policy that will have such an enormous effect on so many people. Either the Government made a decision on a hunch or it made it on ideology. I have no doubt that ideology played a significant part in this because Fine Gael is the government of laissez-faire. It is the government of the market. It is government of the free hand. One would imagine that Fianna Fáil and the Green Party might push against this, but unfortunately Fianna Fáil has become an empty, ideological husk with no core values any more.

You would imagine that Fianna Fáil and the Green Party might push against this, but unfortunately Fianna Fáil has become an empty ideological husk. It has no core values anymore and is literally blown in any direction its coalition partners take it. The Green Party has retreated from everything other than climate and the culture wars. It has retreated from the bread-and-butter issues affecting so many. It has put up the white flag of surrender on this.

The figures relating to the devastating problem that exists speak for themselves. Through freedom of information requests Aontú has submitted in the past couple of years, it has found 400 people have died in homelessness in Dublin in the past five years. That does not include those who are rough sleeping. It includes only the homeless in all the emergency accommodation. The figures are not collected anywhere else. In Limerick, for example, we do not know how many die of homelessness, because the Government does not think it important enough to collect the information. This is absolutely startling.

The second issue we know of concerns notices to quit. In a county like mine, Meath, there are 127 such notices and 31 houses available to rent through daft.ie, yet there are zero emergency accommodation beds in the local authority area. That is replicated right across the country. If the Minister does the maths, he will see the figures simply do not add up. A number of the people affected will end up homeless and in tents, and they will also end up going to the Garda station looking for protection. There are 11,450 such people throughout the State, well in excess of 3,000 of whom are children, yet we know there are 4,500 notices to quit on top of this figure.

The pool of available rental accommodation units in the State amounts to fewer than 1,200. The Minister's decision will have a material effect in just three days on the welfare and safety of so many people. There are 25,000 short-term rental units available in the State through Airbnb, yet the Government sits on its hands and does nothing with this pool of available homes.

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