Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend the People Before Profit–Solidarity group on introducing this motion and, indeed, the Bill with which it is associated. In the second quarter of this year, the RTB reported that 5,735 notices to quit were issued by landlords. Seventy-one of these were issued in my constituency, Clare. I dealt with many of the people involved myself.

As the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Noonan, knows, nine out of ten evictions in this country are landlord led. Up to the end of the last moratorium, seven out of ten were no-fault evictions. I would imagine that number has now increased in view of the fact that, of the total, 3,633 landlords evicted their tenants to sell the property. This Government’s policy was first to depend solely on the private rental sector and it has now decimated that sector because it made the eviction-ban period far too short. I support the motion and the associated Bill because, at the very least, it will leave people with a roof over their heads. That should be a priority for the Government. There has been one tenant in situproperty in Clare – just one – and more than 70 local authority houses lie vacant.

I want to do one thing today, that is, debunk the Government narrative. The putting in place of the eviction ban did not cause high levels of homelessness. I refute that claim. No one ever said it would stop people entering homelessness. It was supposed to do two things, the first being to stop people entering emergency accommodation during the bleakest time of the year, the winter months, bearing in mind that we often do not get to focus on the trauma of entering and living in emergency accommodation, including in the longer term. The second, importantly, was to buy time, giving the Government time to put in place extra capacity by way of modular homes, family hubs and emergency capacity, as done during the Covid pandemic. It is interesting that we had to wait for another emergency to come along before homelessness was declared an emergency. The Government did not provide the emergency accommodation, and that is why the eviction moratorium is now needed again.

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