Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for putting forward this legislation. It is now clear to me the Government's policy is to allow more people to become homeless than we ever thought possible. The Government has not put in place any real or tangible supports to accommodate people who will be made homeless after the winter eviction ban is lifted on 1 April.

It even voted down protections for renters with long-term illnesses, young children or several other vulnerabilities. These are not mistakes. This is not incompetence. They are clear policy decisions that the Government will not protect people from homelessness and it will not build enough houses because it represents big property developers, speculators and bankers but not ordinary working people. Government members stand up here and talk proudly about how they have built more social houses this year than any since 1975. That is 48 years that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Green Party have stood over a policy of not building social housing. That is 48 years when it had a policy of selling off council houses to tenants and did not rebuild to match the sell-off of our stock. It did not plan for the numbers of people who would need social housing up to now. It has failed those people but it knew exactly what it was doing. After all this, and all the policies that sacrificed people’s ability to have a home to the market and the rich, it now has the nerve to remove one of the few barriers left to protect thousands from being evicted into homelessness. The Government created this crisis. It planned it and voted for it every step of the way. Now it is voting to put people into homelessness. A simple acid test for a government is not to put people purposely and deliberately into homelessness. This Government just failed that test. But there are not many tests that the Government does pass: record homelessness; record waiting times for hospitals; record numbers of people on trolleys; and record lack of services. There is not a problem the Government has met that it has not made worse. The problem is that the Government represents the people who make money from these crises. It represents the wealth and these are not crises for the wealthy. It is how the Government makes their money.

The country is rapidly approaching breaking point and the Government’s time is up. It is time to get out and allow people to elect a government that represents them and not the bankers, developers and everyone who got us into this crisis.

I want to tell people that if they are facing notices to quit into homelessness to overhold. Please overhold and contact those people who will help them to do that. Please join the Cost of Living Coalition at the Dáil at 1 p.m. this Saturday to show this Government that we will not take this lying down.

See this speech in context