Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

The response of the Government to tonight's cross-party motion is extremely disappointing. The Labour Party has produced volumes of legislation on housing in the last couple of years, including, but not limited to the Housing (Homeless Families) Bill 2017, the renters' rights Bill and a Bill to give effect to the recommendations of the Kenny report to cap the cost of development land. Einstein's definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The fact of the matter is that with the changes to the tenant in situ scheme, the Government has effectively gutted the scheme. The changes being proposed regarding RPZs will not stop rents going up. Under Housing for All, the Government has never met its targets for social and affordable housing. The Government has come in here and effectively thrown renters under the bus by completely undermining housing options for young people, students, junior doctors and for transient and migrant workers. This will not stop with rents rising, because we all know that these people stay in their accommodation for a fixed amount of time and when they move on the rent will be reset and it will rise and rise again. Recently the Minister said that rents in Ireland are way to high. I agree with him. However, here he has introduced measures which will only cause rents to rise higher and higher and effectively bake in upward-only rent increases.

These RPZ changes will not guarantee any increase in supply in the private rental market, certainly not in my own city of Limerick. It may result in an increase in build-to-rent accommodation in Dublin and maybe in Cork, but it certainly will not be affordable. Rents in Limerick rose by 20% last year. The measures proposed in this motion are common sense, evidence based and implementable. They are emergency measures in response to a crisis which has led to 15,000 people becoming homeless. This is the equivalent of the population of a town the size of Tullamore. An entire generation of young people are locked out of any hope of owning a home of their own and are trapped in their parents' box bedroom, if they are lucky enough. I am one of that generation and it is my generation that is paying the price for this. This is the same generation that still disproportionately bears the scars of the financial crash. Ours is the first generation that will do worse than our parents. This is a crisis caused primarily by poor political and policy decisions, made at the behest of institutional investors and vulture funds which have essentially screwed young people.

For ten years the previous Government and this one have prioritised the needs of big business over ordinary people and this is the result. We only have to look at the group most affected by the latest changes, students. Under these proposed changes, students, as I said, will leave their accommodation as they invariably do every year and they will see their rent rocket every time the tenancy changes. They have no protection under these measures. This begs the question for me as to what the Government has against young people. It feels like ideological warfare against the youth of Ireland. As a result of this Government's and previous ones' policies, young people are denied the traditional rites of passage that come with adulthood; leaving home, renting, buying a property, even starting a family. I have friends who want to have children but cannot because they are living at home with their parents and they cannot bring more people into an already overcrowded home.

The concept of living a normal, independent life has literally become a fairy tale for many people in their 20s and 30s. I feel that whenever I or anyone else calls this out here, we are met with pure and utter condescension. Home ownership is already out of reach for people of my age. Now, with these proposed changes, renting will be out of reach, yet again. We are losing thousands of young people every year to London, Sidney, Dubai, Perth and other places all over the world. Some of this is undoubtedly due to the normal rites of passage that come with adulthood, but the problem is that once people go, they are more than likely not going to come back, due to this housing crisis. It is always young people and it is always renters. If it is not young people and renters, it is Travellers and people from migrant backgrounds who are worst affected by this crisis. I want to be really clear that this housing crisis is not being caused by immigrants or immigration. It is a failure of policy and a failure of Government.

In the time remaining to me, I want to talk about a woman who emailed my office recently. She said she gave up her own secure HAP tenancy in order to return home to care for her late mother, during her terminal illness. She said that like anyone would do, she dropped everything to care for her mam and to become her full-time carer. She was fully transparent with the council throughout this time. It was her understanding that the process to add her to the rent account was under way. However, her mother subsequently died. Despite the woman grieving the loss of her mother, the council refused her right to succeed the tenancy under the two-year rule. She has now been threatened with legal notices, demanding she leave the home and threatening court action if she does not surrender the keys. This is despite the fact that this is the home she grew up in for many years. She is the mother of three young children, including twin boys, who are only one year old. She has continued to pay the rent and look after the property since her mother died. While she is actively trying to secure alternative accommodation, it has become impossible. The only option given to her by the local authority is to present herself as homeless to get emergency accommodation. She says she is on the housing list but a suitable property is nowhere in sight.

From what has transpired during the past week, it is very clear the Government is at sixes and sevens. At this stage we have had four contradictory and confusing announcements. The Government does not know what it is doing and by any objective measure, it is failing to prevent people entering homelessness and failing to build an adequate supply of social and affordable housing. The Housing Commission has recommended that this should amount to 20% of all housing stock. Currently, it amounts to 10% and this is failing young people of my age, in particular.

In this motion, we have presented a number of practical solutions. If the Government engaged meaningfully and took on board some of them, they would make a practical difference. I urge the Government to withdraw its amendment to the motion and to engage constructively with all of us. We have put our political differences aside to come together and we ask the Government to join us in taking collective action.

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