Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

I join others in expressing condolences on the death of Brother Kevin Crowley of the Capuchin Day Centre. I had the pleasure of meeting Brother Kevin, witnessing the immense work that he and his colleagues were doing and experiencing his great sense of humour. He will be sadly missed.

When the idea of a housing tsar was announced some months ago, the question on everyone's lips was the same: what can a tsar possible do for housing that the Minister cannot achieve? The bizarre tsar proposal appears to have been quietly shelved. It has joined a pile of other U-turns on the cutting room floor of Government Buildings and the Custom House. It has become increasingly clear that the Minister cannot take the necessary action alone and needs help. Nearly six months since taking office and in the midst of a severe housing crisis, he has nothing to show for himself other than two Bills. One is to undo the hames he made of those deeply misguided plans to end the rent pressure laws. The other, to be taken next week, is a Bill to amend the huge new planning Act that itself is mostly not yet in force. It is worse than a mere failure to ensure the necessary radical reset. The Government is allowing existing safeguards to fail. It may now have extended rent pressure zones, but it has hollowed them out so that the protections are limited. Rents and evictions will go up.

Speaking of evictions, the Government is starving the tenant in situ scheme so that it has become ineffective. That scheme was the key measure designed to protect renters and keep families out of homelessness. Last Friday, the homelessness figures told of an appalling new record. Some 15,747 people were in emergency accommodation, including 4,844 children, each one a personal tragedy for that child and family. One would think that in the face of this, the Government would ramp up the tenant in situ scheme, but instead it is depriving it of adequate funding and the scheme is failing. We hear it is being curtailed or paused in Dublin, Cork city, Kildare and elsewhere. The Minister has said it will be very difficult to avoid crossing the shameful threshold of 5,000 children in homelessness.

We would think he is a commentator and not the line Minister overseeing an apparent winding down of the tenant in situ scheme and harebrained changes to rent pressure zone laws. All of this has consequences. In 2024, the tenant in situ scheme accounted for two in five homeless preventions in Cork city alone. This meant 100 children were kept out of homelessness. What will happen to families like those now? Increasingly, our TDs and councillors are experiencing hopelessness and despair when they are seeking to advise families facing evictions because there is nothing we can offer. When are we going to see a radical reset from the Government? When are we going to see emergency measures to keep the tenant in situ scheme working and ensure families are kept out of homelessness?

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