Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will continue from where my colleague, Deputy Sheehan, left off. What the Government intends to do if it implements all the recommendations from the Department of housing is turn a scheme, albeit an imperfect one, that was keeping people out of homelessness into a zombie scheme. It will be a scheme that exists in name but that is not practical and does not help people stay out of homelessness. The plans afoot for the tenant in situ scheme are disgraceful. The scheme, as it has existed for the last number of years, is a function of a dysfunctional market. It would not exist if we had a housing system that functioned but we do not.

Unfortunately, we needed a tenant in situ scheme to keep families, single people and couples without children out of homelessness. Unfortunately, if the Government continues with what the Department recommends, it will ensure that many more people enter homelessness. The last visitor to my clinic at the weekend was a single divorced woman in her early 60s who recently availed of the invalidity pension as she just had to give up work. Her tenant in situ application was rejected by the council due to a lack of funding. The woman, who has a disability, will end up in homeless accommodation when she had a landlord who was willing to sell to the council. The landlord had a good relationship with thee tenant and wanted her to stay in the home but was unable to pursue that option because of the Government's disgraceful decision to stop the funding in December. It is an absolute disgrace that it has now presented this filleted, zombie scheme. Even at its most basic, the tenant in situ scheme allowed more time for the local authority's housing allocation or homelessness department to find suitable accommodation because even when an application failed, it took a few months to process it. It was not always the case but sometimes the engagement by the landlord and local authority with the scheme would give the tenant an extra couple of months. Now, that is gone. The ever decreasing number of levers available to Deputies, Citizens Information and tenants themselves to stay out of homelessness are being removed one by one by this Government. The Government is failing to meet its housing targets and to deliver the number of houses needed, whether they have one, two, three, four or more bedrooms or are disability friendly. It is missing every single target. This one imperfect scheme, which managed to keep a few people in their homes and managed to extend people's time before entering homelessness and give local authorities more time, is now being removed. It is a callous decision by the Government.

I commend Sinn Féin on bringing this motion forward. The vast majority of people do not know what the tenant in situ scheme is. It is a niche scheme which people will not know about until they are actually faced with the worst possible vista, namely, a descent into homelessness. It is very welcome that the motion has been brought forward tonight. It deserves every airing and every bit of attention it gets.

Again, is a really callous move by the Government. It should do what the motion says by ensuring local authorities have certainty and funding and are able to apply maximum discretion. We have good local authority housing officers who will, when they have some housing stock and some timelines, buy a two-bedroom house in which a family that may need a three-bedroom house is living just to keep them in it so they can later transfer to a three-bedroom house. They will then move someone else into the two-bedroom house. This is what housing officers can do if they are given the resources to do it. This Government, like the previous one which was the same Government, is removing, one by one, the levers and possibilities that would keep people in their homes. It is callous and it should be reversed.

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