Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

It is now eight months since the Government lifted the eviction ban and took away the only thing keeping thousands of people from facing eviction. It was a political decision to allow a level of homelessness in this country that has not been seen in modern times. Time will tell the full damage of lifting the no-fault eviction ban, but we know that since the Government took away the ban, in excess of 15,000 people have been given notices to quit. That is a greater number than what was seen in the Famine. That is a quote from an article I read.

People facing eviction have nowhere else to go. It is impossible to find somewhere to rent. It is near impossible for many to afford the current price of rent. Emergency homeless accommodation is overstretched and underfunded. It is the norm across the developed world to have a permanent ban on no-fault eviction as the bedrock of a stable rental market. This Government does not think Irish renters deserve that protection even in the middle of a generational housing crisis. Its policies are failing.

Since the Government implemented Housing for All, homelessness has increased by 51%, with child homelessness rising by 67%. According to the RTB, 30,000 households have been evicted in the past three years. That means almost one in ten renting households has been affected under this Government. Those lucky enough to be able to find a new place face extortionate and rising rents. The ESRI has found that almost 300,000, or 54%, of renting households were in receipt of some kind of State support to help with the cost of housing in 2020. The average rent in Dublin is €2,102 a month. The cost of housing is simply becoming further out of the reach of ordinary people.

The Government has been lauding the €500 tax credit as putting a month's rent back into people's pockets. If you think a month's rent for the average person is €500, you have lost your mind. You just have no clue what is going on. This is how we end up not just with record homelessness but homelessness that sets a new record almost every month. These figures do not even cover people sleeping rough, sleeping in cars, sleeping on couches, families split or in emergency accommodation and in the houses of friends and family.

According to research by Dr. Rory Hearne, nearly 75,000 people are in hidden homelessness. That is tens of thousands with no place to call home. The Government is standing over the immiseration of people and yet refusing to accept that its policies are failing and to implement the change we need. This is a crisis that hits the worst-off the hardest. The Government has failed to protect the most vulnerable. Department of housing figures show that single-parent families make up between 52% and 54% of those in homeless accommodation. This situation is getting worse. Of the 207 families who have entered homeless accommodation since April, 70% are single-parent families. Single-parent families are more likely to face poverty and energy deprivation and are now increasingly more likely to face homelessness. This is a national disgrace and yet the Government is happy to allow things to get worse for single-parent families with more and more facing or in homelessness.

It was in this situation that the Government decided to lift the no-fault eviction ban. It could not justify it then and it cannot justify it now. It has repeated the line that the ban did not work because homelessness figures kept rising. Obviously, homelessness figures will continue to rise because the Government is not building enough houses. The Department of housing has a €1 billion underspend. This ban is about stemming the evictions to take pressure off our emergency accommodation and keep as many people in their homes as we can.

Renters need more. We will not end this housing crisis without real intervention from the State with mass public house construction and a new set of rights for renters. Security of tenure and tenants' rights need to be improved. We need an RTB that can properly enforce tenants' rights and regularly inspect properties. We need controls on rents to push down extortionate prices. I support the Bill and I thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing it to the floor of the House. We need a no-fault eviction ban, but it needs to be permanent and enshrined as the bedrock of tenants' rights and security of tenure in the rental market.

A young woman contacted me today. She has two boys aged ten and 12. She has been on the housing list for nearly ten years. In area K she is number 445 on the list, in area L she is 356, and in area M she is 410. She is in overcrowded accommodation and getting desperate. Because of the overcrowding, tensions are building. This is what people are living through. The Minister of State and his colleagues should be ashamed of themselves to allow this to continue.

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