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

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. It is vital we come back to the housing emergency before the Dáil breaks up this week so that the Government is not allowed off the hook for a desperate situation thousands are facing throughout the country. The Government made the summer recess as long as it could this summer because it knows every moment we are not in here is another missed chance to hold the Government to account for its increasingly obvious failures with regard to housing, our health system, the cost of living and all the crises across our public services.

The housing emergency has become a national disgrace. It has been caused by the failed policies of successive governments under Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and the Labour Party. They have slavishly placed the market and profit making at the heart of housing policy. They prioritised the banks', developers' and speculators' ability to make money over people's ability to afford safe, secure homes. They stopped building public homes because the people they represent, the wealthy, could not profit from it. They privatised house building, the maintenance of the public housing stock and now, with 72,000 HAP tenancies last year, it has even privatised the provision of public housing. Those 72,000 households should be housed in secure high-quality public housing but instead face insecurity of tenancy, vulnerable situations with landlords and, in many cases, substandard housing.

Last month we all received a joint press release from the four Dublin local authorities. They are seeking that all developers and builders with planning-approved land on which construction has not started or has been paused would apply to sell all future properties on those sites to local authorities. It is estimated this could provide up to 55,000 homes in Dublin alone. Why are we seeking applications? Why has the Government not gone in to provide the funds already or, better still, bought that land and started building on it through local authorities or the Land Development Agency, LDA? It shows the Government is still trying to fix this crisis with policy and ideology that got us here in the first place. There is no urgency, no recognition of this emergency, and no recognition of the poverty, overcrowding and desperation the housing emergency is causing. It still wants a private solution to a public problem. It is still placing the need of the market to return massive profits above people's need to have home.

The Government's housing policy is failing even by its own metrics. We have had three years of missed social housing targets, hundreds of millions of euro in underspend on housing, hundreds of sites with planning permission but no active construction, and ten months in a row with record homeless numbers. It set up woefully inadequate housing targets and even missed them. Rents have been spiralling out of control for years. They have increased by 23% since the Government was formed, with average rents now €1,507 a month nationally. That is more than €18,000 euro year, which does not even guarantee tenants any sort of security in their home.

The Government lifted the eviction ban which allowed more than 15,000 notices to quit to come into force. The Taoiseach has said the eviction ban did not work. I would like to see him say that face to face to any of the tens of thousands of people facing eviction because of the lifting of the ban. As I am sure other Deputies and even the Minister of State have, I have received countless emails and had calls to my office from people who are facing eviction and are desperate because they have nowhere to go.

I will be supporting the motion. There are more than 12,000 people in emergency accommodation, with 3,699 of them children. That does not even take into account the thousands more sleeping in their cars. I have come across men holding down jobs and sleeping in their cars, people on the street, and people couch surfing in the homes of friends or family. With so many people homeless and many more facing that prospect, it is a disgrace the Government would table an amendment defending this situation.

Over successive governments, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and the Labour Party created this crisis. They put the market's need to make money ahead of the ability of people to find homes. They prioritised private interest over the national good. They ended a programme of public housing because there is no profit to be made from it and now people are living with the consequences. I support public housing on public land developed by a public construction company.

On Saturday while out canvassing in Drimnagh, I spoke to a young woman who has been on the housing list for 20 years. She is in a HAP tenancy at the moment. It is absolutely outrageous that people's lives and the lives of their children are still dependent on a landlord to provide them with a roof over their heads and they have no security.

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