Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister is aware, the ban on no-fault evictions ended on 31 of March, and still this Government has failed to answer the question we have all been asking, before that and since then: where are these people supposed to go? The cost of rent has escalated year on year and those who are providing emergency accommodation are advising that they have reached their capacity. They have told me this repeatedly, for months, in Limerick. I have said this in the Dáil Chamber also for months. Those who can afford the high rents have said they cannot afford a property in Limerick. Ondaft.ietoday there are three properties available in Limerick: two one-bedroom apartments and one three-bedroom house. There is absolutely nowhere for anyone to go.

My office has been contacted by many families who have already received the dreaded notice to quit. Others are now worried upon receipt of any correspondence or communication from their landlord in case it is a notice to quit. They have a sense of shame because of their predicament. The shame should not be felt by them but by those who backed the ending of the no-fault eviction ban. The shame should be felt by those who failed to deliver. The shame should be felt by those who failed to use the space of the eviction ban to prepare. This Government has beenin situfor three years, and it has been three years of failure in the context of housing. The Government dramatically missed its targets and it has underspent its capital budget by not building.

Let us consider two things that the Government could have done. In the Limerick local authority area there are 230 void houses. These are not being refurbished as fast as they could be or to any scale that they could be because the local authority simply does not have the money. It is the Minister's Department that puts them through red tape that takes so long and we just cannot get them turned over. That is 230 houses. We can talk about voids all we want but if a person is living in a council estate, or what was a council estate, and there is a boarded-up void house next door, that person must heat their house more. Rubbish could be dumped in there. It is not fair that people have to live next to these houses because the Minister will not free up the moneys that the local authorities want.

The Minister also announced a tenant in situscheme. Limerick has been approved for 75 houses. However, the local authority there told me that it does not have the staff to do that. Today I raised with the Taoiseach the specific case of a woman who was hoping have her house bought under the scheme. Her circumstances have changed. She has two children, a boy and a girl, but the local authority will not progress her application because it simply does not have the staff. They told her that she will have to wait as long as everybody else. Meanwhile, the landlord has abused her on the phone. He started out being friendly to her but he has said he is not now selling the house to the council. This is because the local authority does not have the staff. I have said this in the Chamber a couple of times. I said a number of weeks ago when the Minister announced the scheme that if he did not fund the local authorities and did not fund the staff, and did not give clarity to what they are doing, then it could not and would not work. Unfortunately, it has come to pass.

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