Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There are approximately 13,000 people, including 4,000 children, sleeping in emergency accommodation funded by the Minister of State's Department. Fine Gael has been in government since 2011 and, according to the census of that year, there were only 3,808 people officially categorised as homeless. That means that in all of the time the Minister of State's party has been in government, homelessness has increased by a staggering 250%. Just let that sink in for a second. Three years ago, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael formed a coalition. Two years ago, a new housing plan was published. Just in the past two years, homelessness has increased by 56%. Child homelessness, with young children sleeping in emergency accommodation for a year, two years or three years, has increased by 78%.

If the Minister of State is coming here and telling us that tackling homelessness is the Government's top priority, and after 11 years, homelessness has increased by 250%, with child homelessness increasing by 78% in the past two years, I would hate to see what the results would be if it were not prioritised by the Government. There have been 12 years of Fine Gael. It has been propped up by Fianna Fáil for seven years. Every single year, homelessness has increased. The Government is making things worse. The longer those parties are in government, the worse this crisis will get.

What is worse about the figures is they are not even the true level of homelessness. As the Minister of State knows, that 13,000 figure does not include women and children in domestic violence refuges funded by Tusla and the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. It does not include the 5,000 men, women and children trapped in direct provision who have their leave to remain but cannot get out because of the housing crisis and are essentially using it as emergency accommodation. It does not include the several hundred men and women who, tonight, will sleep in hostels not funded by the State but by religious orders. It does not even begin to contemplate the unknown number of people who are hidden homeless and are forced to sofa surf or sleep in overcrowded, cramped or unsuitable conditions with family and friends. Even if you take those initial categories, the real level of adults and children in emergency accommodation tonight is somewhere closer to 18,000. That is the Minister of State's top priority.

We have to ask ourselves why this is the case. There is a very straightforward answer. It is because, for every one of those years, from 2011 to the present, the Minister of State's Government, whether supported through confidence and supply, Independents, or now Fianna Fáil, has failed to deliver an adequate supply of social and affordable homes. It is not to do with what is going on in the private rental sector or other factors of the economy but because the Government has never planned, funded and delivered a sufficient volume of social and affordable homes to meet that need. That is the reason.

Look at the Government's record over recent years. Deputy Darragh O'Brien has been the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage since 2020. Every single year, he has not even delivered the very low level of social and affordable housing delivery the Government promises. From 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022, he blamed Covid, Brexit and inflation. What about this year? Those excuses are gone. We saw the figures snuck up onto the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage's website late on Friday. It is only at 15% of new build social housing delivered by halfway through this year, at 1,400 units out of 9,100. Sure, the Government will do better before the end of the year, but just like last year, because the Government was at a similar point last year, it will be a real challenge to meet the 9,100 new builds. The Government did not meet its 9,000 target last year and it is likely it will not meet it this year. The Government's affordable housing delivery is even worse. A total of 101 affordable purchase homes were delivered in the first half of this year. Twenty-two affordable cost-rental units were delivered in the first half of this year and many of them are not even affordable because their rents are at €1,400 or €1,500 a month. To come in here and say the Government's plan is working, that it is the Government's top priority, and it is the biggest level of investment in the history of the State is just not true. The figures speak for themselves.

Sinn Féin enthusiastically supports the motion that is before us today. I remind the Minister of State the sponsoring Deputies of the Bill did exactly what he said they should have done. They went to the Business Committee and sought permission from the Business Committee to waive pre-legislative scrutiny. The Business Committee did what it always does and asked our Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage if we would waive it. We had a very robust argument. A minority of us said "Yes" and that, given the urgency of this matter, we should get it through into formal Committee Stage, but the Government members of the committee blocked it because they have a majority. In fact, not only have they blocked this one, we have about 20 Private Member's Bills, and this is not the only one dealing with homelessness, stuck unaddressed because there is a majority of Government members on that committee who will not allow us to progress Bills. I am not the only Deputy with Bills similar to our colleagues here. Almost all the Opposition has similar ones.

The reason that People Before Profit-Solidarity has taken this measure is because the Government is blocking, in committee, the progress of a Bill this House agreed. Of course, we know the Minister of State did not mean to agree it. We know it was a mistake, but the House decided this. Why not let the Bill progress? It is because the Government wants to conceal the truth.

A ban on no-fault evictions is not the solution to the problem and the proposers of the motion know that, but it gives us crucial breathing space. When Eoghan Murphy introduced the Covid-19 ban on evictions, as has been mentioned, family homelessness plummeted by over 68%. Contrary to the Minister of State's claim today and the Taoiseach's claim before, the temporary ban on no-fault evictions that was introduced in September last year had an impact because, month on month, the figures from the Minister of State's Department show dramatic increases in family and child homelessness. There was a separate issue with a persistent and rising level of single person homelessness, but it was beginning to have an effect. The overall rate of presentations in emergency accommodation occupation was falling month on month. If the Government had left it in train for a further period, it would have gone down further.

The real scandal of the Government's response to the ban on evictions is that for that period of months, it sat on its hands. Eoghan Murphy closed the tenant in situscheme, to his eternal shame, and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, refused to open it for two years. It was reopened in April 2022 and virtually nothing was bought from April 2022 until March 2023. The reason was the Minister would not listen to the advice of this side of the Chamber and did not instruct councils what to do. It is beginning to work and I acknowledge that. The real shame is the Government did not do it a year ago. How many families would have been prevented from entering homelessness if the Government had done what we reasonably asked 12 to 24 months earlier? The tenantin situ cost-rental scheme is a shambles and is not working. I raised this with the Minister recently. The Government really needs to get its act together for those people who are not eligible for social housing support but are also at risk of homelessness.

What is even worse are the two crucial things the Government could and should have done during the ban on no-fault evictions. We urged the Government to do them but it did not. It did not increase and accelerate the delivery of social and affordable homes. We told the Government how to do it. Local authority housing managers have told the Government how to do it. Approved housing bodies have told the Government how to do it and it is refusing to do it. I proposed to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage last September using emergency procurement and planning powers, delivering an additional stream of social and affordable homes above its existing targets, specifically and exclusively for our pensioners who are in emergency accommodation and families with children. Not unlike what the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, did with respect to modular accommodation for people fleeing the war in Ukraine, the Minister of State's Department could have done something similar and brought on train at least 1,000 additional units. That would have reduced the number of households in emergency accommodation during that period, but the Department did none of that.

We are back in this situation because of the Government's low level of social and affordable housing targets, its even lower level of output, and its failure to put in place an emergency package of measures to reduce the flow of families and singles into homelessness and accelerate people's exit from homelessness. We are back here having the same discussion. We do not want to propose a ban on evictions. We want to welcome the Government delivering huge volumes of social and affordable homes and homelessness being eradicated. That is what we would like to be doing but the Government's failure has forced us here today.

On Friday, yet again the Minister of State's Department will release the figures for the number of adults and children in Department-funded emergency accommodation. That number will show an increase. More people will be in emergency accommodation, and they will be spending longer in emergency accommodation than ever before. While I support this motion and the policy proposals that all members of the Opposition have outlined, the real solution to the homelessness crisis is to get Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael the hell out of government. Every single year for 11 years homelessness has increased. You do not have to be a brain surgeon to work out the logic. The only way we will get homelessness moving in the other direction is to get those parties out of power. The only way we can do that is through a general election. The sooner that happens the better.

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