Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The following are the words of Arklow teacher, Aoife Ni Chéileachair, who told her heartbreaking story to the media:

I am going to be evicted at the start of the last week of term. It's gotten to the point that I may not be able to take my job up next September because I have nowhere to live in the vicinity.

In a few short weeks, she faces eviction from the home she has rented for seven years. She has tried to find alternative rented accommodation and she has tried to buy a home but all to no avail. Aoife, a teacher with a raft of specialist qualifications, has nowhere to go and she has told her boss that she may have to leave her job as a result. She is not alone.

The Government's decision to remove the eviction ban has thrown thousands of renters to the wolves. It is a nightmare for the mother in Cork who fears her daughter will have to leave the autism spectrum disorder, ASD, unit in her national school because they cannot find alternative accommodation in the local area and for the family in Wicklow, with two children aged under five and a baby on the way in mid-May. They always paid their rent but in two weeks, they have to be out of the home they have rented for the past six years. That is the only home those children have known and it will be gone. It is also a nightmare for the young woman in Dublin who is being evicted from her home of two years. She has worked since the age of 16 and she has saved up a deposit but she cannot get a mortgage and she faces the prospect of moving back in with her parents.

The Government has created this catastrophe, having failed to spend more than €1 billion of funding for housing. Little wonder then that Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage figures released last night show that the Government's housing plan is in crisis. These figures reveal that Government missed its affordable housing targets last year by nearly 60%. Thousands of affordable homes that should have been built have not been built. This is an incredible failure by Government in the middle of the most serious housing emergency in the history of the State. It is why large numbers of working people cannot put an affordable and secure roof over their heads. It is why those facing eviction have nowhere to go. They ask where the urgency from Government is and where the affordable homes to buy or rent are.

When Deputy Varadkar returned as Taoiseach in December, he said housing was his priority but his Government's first major decision was to push thousands of working families, single people and pensioners towards homelessness. Tá na mílte teaghlach atá ag obair - daoine singil agus pinsinéirí - ag déileáil le díshealbhú de bharr cinnidh an Rialtais. Coicís ar aghaidh agus fós níl aon phlean ag an Rialtas, agus fós ní féidir leis an Rialtas a rá le daoine cá bhfuil siad ceaptha dul. We are more than two weeks on from the Government's disastrous decision to lift the eviction ban. The Government's so-called safety nets do not make a lick of difference to people facing eviction in the here and now and it has no real plan to stop people losing the roofs over their heads. The Government still cannot answer the fundamental question of where people are meant to go. In the absence of a plan that works, the Government must reinstate the eviction ban until the end of January and then use the time it will buy to do what is necessary to protect renters.

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