Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

There are many reasons People Before Profit will be supporting the no-confidence motion in the Government tomorrow. The most important and powerful of those at the moment is the Government's absolutely heartless and cruel decision to allow the eviction of thousands of families, individuals and, worst of all, children, into homelessness with its decision to lift the eviction ban. In the vast majority of those cases, those people have nowhere to go. Emergency accommodation is not available to them and certainly not, in most cases, anywhere near where they live or their children go to school. They have no social and affordable housing available to them because they are usually too far down the list. Affordable private rented accommodation is not available to them because rents are at absolutely extortionate levels. Housing assistance payment, HAP, support does not go anywhere near meeting rent levels and the so-called mitigation measures the Government has been trying to trumpet as an excuse for lifting the eviction ban are either not in place at all or are completely not functioning in any serious, effective way, such as the purchase in situscheme or the mooted cost-rental purchase scheme.

It is utterly shameful that some Independents - so-called - in this House are horse trading with the Government over local issues that have nothing to do with the homelessness and housing crisis in exchange for potentially supporting the Government to put thousands of families and individuals into homelessness. They should be ashamed of themselves. The Green Party, which in its pre-election statement said it was "against evictions into homelessness", is going to vote and has voted with the Government to put thousands of people into homelessness. Some in the Opposition say the eviction ban should be kept temporarily. We will, of course, support those efforts but People Before Profit's view is that all of the approximate 750,000 people who live in private rented accommodation should have security of tenure. If they do nothing wrong, they should not be evicted, as is the case in most of Europe. Because the Taoiseach is clearly, grimly determined to press ahead with this cruel and heartless measure to allow the eviction of thousands of people, the Cost of Living Coalition is calling for people to gather outside the gates of the Dáil at 1 p.m. this weekend to protest and resist the Government's eviction ban. We will also say to people that anybody who overholds has every right to do so, given they have nowhere else to go. Are those facing eviction, who have nowhere to go, not right at this stage to protest and indeed overhold? Would the Taoiseach meekly go into homelessness if he was faced with an unfair no-fault eviction?

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