Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I would not mind getting a copy of the Minister of State's speech to compare it with that of the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell. I think they are the same bla, bla, bla as Greta Thunberg famously said about how we deal with the climate crisis.

We are no strangers to having to use Private Members' time to pursue Bills that just sit and wait and have nothing done with them. The same happened to a climate emergency measures Bill which was passed by the Oireachtas. We had to use Private Members' time to insist it move through Committee Stage. With the support of the Minister of State's party that was in opposition at the time, we got it passed and then it was obstructed further by using some other vague Standing Order which we ended up contesting in the High Court. We are used to having to challenge this House on its implementation, or lack of, of democracy and we do so today with a huge level of sincerity.

I will talk about the responses of both Ministers of State, Deputies Noonan and O'Donnell. I have a copy of the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell's speech and I have just gone through it again. I have noted that five or six times he used the idea of balance between landlords and tenants as an argument for why the Government will not support this Bill. The Government has utterly failed - all political commentators make this point - to prove the correlation between the eviction ban and landlords exiting the market. The Government says it exists but has not proved it.

Earlier the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, spoke about protecting renters while trying to keep small landlords. He talked about retaining small landlords while increasing housing stock, protecting renters while trying to keep small landlords in the system and stated the system "can provide an efficient, viable, affordable, safe and secure framework for both landlords and tenants". The Government has failed. If it had not, we would not be debating this motion. If the housing figures were not escalating because of the lifting of the eviction ban we would not be making this argument today.

The record of Fine Gael in government was alluded to earlier by Deputy Ó Broin. He is quite right. I looked back on the record and it stuck in my head that in 2016 the then Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, promised to end homelessness. On the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, he made a big deal of it. He said that he would be crazy to promise a solution to the use of hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation for emergency accommodation for families by mid-2017 but he said that he was going to make it happen. He even gave a comment to a media outlet that he would bet his career on his promise to end homelessness. My God, they would say mass in this place. If they say anything, they will say anything at all to try to prove themselves right. If he was an honest elected representative, he would not be Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. He would have resigned, because he utterly failed to hold to a promise he repeated in 2016. In 2016, 6,906 people were homeless and the number has more than doubled seven years later. That is the Government's record. I repeat what I have said many times. Shame on the Green Party for backing up the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael coalition in the implementation of their response to the housing and homelessness crisis which is the main crisis that dominates people's lives.

I will comment on the reference to domestic and gender-based violence and refuge spaces. Tonight we will discuss the Bill to set up an agency for domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. We currently have 181 refuge spaces for people suffering from gender-based violence in relationships. The Istanbul Convention, which we have signed, recommends 472 spaces. What a gap. What is the promise? The promise is that by the end of 2024 we will have another 24 spaces. Many counties do not have any spaces at all and the truth is that many people continue to live with their abusers because they cannot go into homeless accommodation and put their children into hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation for years on end. I know many families who have been in homeless accommodation for two and three years.

I repeat that I would like a copy of the Minister of State's speech, but it is more bla, bla, bla and it is the same bla, bla, bla I heard from the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, earlier. It is shameful that the Deputies who did not turn up for the debate today will all turn up tonight to vote the way they have been told to vote, which is to oppose this motion to move forward with an eviction ban to do what it is supposed to do, not to strike a balance between landlords and tenants, but to protect vulnerable families, particularly children, from ending up in disgraceful conditions for years on end while there is a housing and homelessness crisis that consecutive Governments have failed to deal with.

See this speech in context