Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Whoever thought that lifting the eviction ban was a good idea needs to reflect. In this case it was the Government. Since the eviction ban was lifted hundreds of families have moved into emergency accommodation. This is a fact. They should not be in this situation, which the Government has created for thousands of families. This stems back to the policy of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to have a market-led approach rather than a citizen-led approach. Other countries, in particular Austria, have a much better system of public housing that does not look to the market.

The Government speaks on this issue day in, day out and year in, year out and the situation gets worse. In recent months 15 to 20 families have come to my office to speak about the heartache and trauma of a notice to quit. Perhaps five or ten years ago these families could have gone back into the rental market but that is not the case now. The majority of these families will go into emergency accommodation. This is a fact. The Government has allowed this to happen and it continues to allow it to happen.

The trauma and stress that comes with this is incalculable. We cannot put words on this situation whereby families who had rental accommodation do not know where they will go. The stress this puts on children is unbelievable. When families go into emergency accommodation they could be stuck there for a hell of a long time because there is a lottery to get rental accommodation. Ordinary housing assistance payment rates make it virtually impossible to get any accommodation. With homeless housing assistance payment rates, people are chasing the market because it is so inflationary. The situation is the perfect storm for those families and individuals who find themselves in homeless accommodation.

The real homeless figures are probably beyond 20,000 and they will probably get worse. If we track the situation that has happened in recent months, we see it will only get worse because of the policy on the eviction ban. It would make sense in an emergency accommodation crisis, such as that which we have in the State, that until this emergency is lifted an eviction ban would be put in place for the foreseeable future with regard to landlords evicting tenants in the case of selling a property.

These are all political choices the Minister of State's party, along with other parties, have made on this. It will only get worse and there is a consequence. We can talk about political consequences but the most important consequence is for the families who find themselves in this situation, which is not of their making but of the Minister of State’s party and his Government. It is as simple as that and the Minister of State will have to wrestle with his conscience that they have put thousands and thousands of people in emergency accommodation and the consequences of that are incalculable.

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