Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I do not expect this Government to tell the truth about anything relating to housing in light of the Taoiseach's repeated refusal to confirm or deny that the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform deliberately misled the Irish people during the general election, but here are some truths. Since April 2023, 2,500 households have been prevented from becoming homeless because of the scheme. A total of 16,546 notices of termination were issued to private residential tenants last year. More than half of them were on the grounds of landlords intending to sell the property. The number of people independent of housing funded emergency homeless accommodation increased by 13% in the past year to 15,286, including over 4,500 children. I was shocked late last year when I started to get emails and messages from people regarding the length of time it was taking or the fact that local authorities were not approving any new tenant in situ applications. This left people puzzled. I contacted the housing department in Fingal County Council, which confirmed that it could not proceed with any more because the Government had not given it the figures. It left hundreds of people - families and individuals - without a decision due to a lack of funding.

This is the result of the Government's failure to give the targets and funding and is putting larger numbers of people at risk of homelessness. Landlords are getting frustrated. These are people who want to sell their homes to the local authority. They want to sell them and are disengaging from the scheme. Let us make it simple. We need to ensure that local authorities have the maximum level of funding and the necessary targets to be able to operate the tenant in situ scheme, provide them with flexibility to operate the scheme and reject the new restrictions that are being proposed by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

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