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

I move:

That Dáil Éireann:

notes that:

— on 22nd February, 2023, Dáil Éireann agreed the second reading of the Eviction Ban Bill 2022;

— in the intervening period, the number of homeless people has risen sharply, with an additional 1,093 people, which includes an additional 398 children, living in emergency homeless accommodation;

— there has been a large increase in notices of termination of tenancies in the three months since the Government lifted the eviction ban, with 5,735 notices of termination issued in the period of April to June, 21 per cent higher than the 4,753 notices of termination in the first quarter of 2023, indicating that further large increases in evictions into homelessness are likely in the approaching winter months; and

— in the seven intervening months, detailed scrutiny of the Eviction Ban Bill 2022 has not yet been conducted by the Select Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage; and agrees that, given the extreme urgency of the housing and homelessness crisis, the requirement for the Select Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage, pursuant to Standing Order 180, to report, prior to Committee Stage, on its detailed scrutiny of the Eviction Ban Bill 2022, is hereby suspended.

This motion seeks to waive the pre-legislative scrutiny requirement for People Before Profit-Solidarity's Eviction Ban Bill, which passed Second Stage in this House in February of this year, but which has not progressed since then. It is a matter of urgency that it progresses so an emergency ban on no-fault evictions can be reinstated, though we would be more than happy for the Government to reinstate the ban itself.

There is no acceptable level of homelessness. I really hope the Government gets that because of the hardship, suffering and trauma families, individuals and, worst of all, children facing homelessness or made homeless are threatened with when they have, in the vast majority of cases, done nothing wrong. They have paid the rent, not engaged in antisocial behaviour and often been living in private rented accommodation for years and years and are then evicted into homelessness and face the terror and fear of being put into emergency accommodation with no option, in many cases, to get out of there. This is because there are 160,000 households awaiting social housing across the various lists and rents are off the Richter scale and totally unaffordable to the vast majority of people. Accordingly, if people are pushed into homelessness through no fault of their own they are in deep trouble. They often have children. There are now 12,800 individuals of whom just under 4,000 are children suffering the trauma, hardship and terror of being homeless.

There is no doubt the Government's decision to lift the eviction ban has made the situation worse and it is Orwellian that the Government claims this is not the case. Let us look at the trajectory of homelessness. In July 2014 there were 3,258 people homeless. By January 2020 that had gone up to 10,200, which represented a tripling over those years. The only period when the number of people in homelessness reduced was the one in which the eviction ban was brought in during the Covid pandemic. The figure went from 10,200 in January 2020 down to 7,900 in May 2021 when that emergency ban was lifted towards the end of the pandemic. Thus, there was a dramatic reduction in the number of people being driven into homelessness during the first ban on evictions during Covid. Ever since then it has gone up. The Government says when it brought in the second temporary ban for a few months in the winter of 2022 that the ban did not stop a number of people going into homelessness and therefore it was not working. It is true people continued to enter homelessness, but the vast majority of those did so because they had received notice to quit prior to the introduction of the temporary ban, so it did not cover them. We pointed out at the time that people would still be made homeless during the temporary ban because it did not cover notices to quit that had already expired. However, it is absolutely clear the number of people entering homelessness reduced. The overall figures increased, but the number of people entering homelessness reduced.

Of course, when the Government made the disastrous decision to lift the second temporary eviction ban the numbers began to climb dramatically. In March 2023 there were 11,988 people in emergency accommodation. The latest figures, for July 2023, show 12,847 people in that situation, of whom 4,000 are children, as I said. In other words, since the Government's decision to lift the temporary eviction ban, an additional 1,093 people have entered homelessness and emergency accommodation, of whom 398 are children. We have also seen a dramatic increase in the number of notices to quit issued. In the first quarter of 2023 there were 4,753 notices to quit. In the second quarter, that had increased to 5,735, which is a 21% increase due to the Government giving the green light to allow people who have done nothing wrong to be evicted.

Earlier this week, when he was speaking in support of this motion and the Bill to reinstate the eviction ban, Fr. Peter McVerry predicted that on the current trajectory of people entering homelessness we are facing potentially 16,000 families, individuals and children homeless by the time we arrive at a general election because in most cases they are being evicted on grounds of sale or other grounds allowed by the Government. That is just shameful. It is disgusting to allow this to happen and for the Government to wash its hands and say this is somehow an acceptable level of homelessness or, even worse, to put forward an Orwellian argument that suggests it is somehow improving the situation to allow these evictions because it will encourage more landlords to enter the market. As a final point, one of the arguments the Government has made is that if it reintroduces an eviction ban it will encourage more landlords to leave the market. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, brought out figures during the summer that showed that compared with the last census, the number of tenancies has dramatically increased. Those figures are considerably higher than the registrations for the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, which suggests there are a huge number of properties being purchased, often on the back of evictions, by institutional investors or by landlords who are failing to register with the RTB. The Government should not be pandering to people like that and should be doing something about it to ensure people are not driven into homelessness.

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