Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be agreeing with this motion because I have seen what the lifting of the eviction ban has done. It has added to more difficulties for people who are seeking a home. They are being evicted from their homes and have no rights. I attend an average of ten clinics a week and once a month I might do another 15 or 20 in small rural communities. Every Saturday, I hold a clinic at 9.30 a.m. in my office in Skibbereen, one in the Brewery Bar in Clonakilty at 11 a.m., another one in my office in Bandon at 12 noon, one in the Parkway Hotel at 2 p.m. and one at 3 p.m. in the Boston Bar. I do that every Saturday without fail, 52 weeks of the year. I was in my clinic in Kinsale recently and five people came into me, three of whom were in a housing crisis. Two of them were facing eviction and one of them had to go home and leave their house. They had no protection whatsoever. I respect the people who come in here and say we are always shouting and that maybe we are forgetting about the people who own the homes. There are shocking people out there who will not leave homes. There seem to be no protections for house owners, as such. I do not like the word "landlord". Some of them are people who might have one or two houses. They are coming to me and telling me that there are people in their homes who have no intention of paying rent and who can stay there because they have rights to. People should not have the right to be in a home if they do not want to pay or make an effort to pay. However, for the good genuine people who are trying their best and living in a house and getting an eviction order, it is a terrible plight, especially with the winter coming and coming up to Christmas. They have nowhere to turn.

While I have the floor for the last 16 seconds, I should say that there is a huge crisis out there with once-off planning in rural Ireland to which this Government seems to have turned a blind eye. We are splashing houses here, there and everywhere, but when an innocent person wants to get a house in their own community or in the couple of fields that their parents own, they are being refused planning permission. It is a huge issue.

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