Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

Cuirim fáilte roimh all the visitors in the Public Gallery and the Distinguished Visitors Gallery.

The Taoiseach just said that housing is the single biggest issue facing us. We all agree on that but I do not know whether the Taoiseach agrees that the housing system is broken. It has been commodified and marketised. The private rental sector is filling the gaps left by lengthy social housing lists. Far too many people are in homelessness and the Government has presided over an extraordinary failure and a significant shift. We have seen home ownership rates dropping and people in Ireland are now renting in far larger numbers, not by choice, but by necessity, yet the Government has failed to update the law to protect renters. The irony is that the private rental sector receives plenty of public money but it is through measures that do not address the root causes of the crisis. There was nothing in last week's budget to offer that radical reset of housing policy that is so badly needed.

With the rental accommodation scheme and housing assistance payments, the State has taken responsibility off itself for housing those who should be in social housing. We all know that in the private rental sector there are thousands of would-be social tenants and thousands of would-be home owners who lack substantial protections such as security of tenure, affordability of rent and the ability to make their homes their own. Renters have far too few rights in Ireland and the relationship with the landlord for far too many is defined by the existence of a toothless regulator and the threat of eviction, which is a very real threat, because tenants who pay their rent on time and comply with the terms of their leases can still be evicted if landlords need the property for a family member, to sell it, or if they purport to plan to sell it.

The very worst manifestation for renters of the lack of rights is the threat and reality of eviction. Landlords continue to possess the broad liberty to evict tenants for no good reason and evictions are driving homelessness. To stop evictions, the tenant in situ scheme was supposed to be the safety net, funding councils to buy properties if tenants were at risk of homelessness. The scheme has kept a roof over the heads of more than 2,500 households, but unfortunately, the Government is not sustaining it. Its funding is uncertain.

The Government is now saying it will legislate to require landlords to disclose the rate of rent they charge tenants. That is something for which we have called for many years. A renters' register was in the first Bill I introduced as a TD in this House in 2021, the renters' rights Bill, but we need to see more from the Taoiseach and the Government. In particular, we need to see them reintroduce a measure that worked to slow homelessness rates during the Covid-19 pandemic, the ban on no-fault evictions. Will the Taoiseach consider this winter, a ban at least on child evictions? More than 5,000 children are now homeless and we are at risk of normalising child homelessness.

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