Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity)

There is a social crisis, an eviction epidemic, in Dublin 15, up the road from the Minister. The Minister knows it well. It relates to the decisions taken in the budget to give huge VAT cuts to developers rather than finance local authorities to build. There is a document from Fingal County Council about section 28 guidelines and housing growth requirements in Fingal County Council. It mentions a land bank, which the Minister knows well, in Dunsink, Elm Green and Scribblestown that could house 20,000 people. It is the most strategic land bank in the whole of Dublin. It is on a rail line, close to the city centre and it would cater for the homeless epidemic in Blanchardstown, Finglas, Ashtown and many other places and would provide affordable homes for workers. That land bank has been sitting undeveloped for a long time. It is on a long-term strategy of the council. The Minister's officials and those of the Department of housing should be sitting down with every local authority to discuss what can be done to get these land banks up and running, the infrastructure going and so forth and asking them what money they need. They need €200 million straight away.

In reply to a question from a councillor on 2 October about how many notices of termination had been given in the Dublin 15 area, Fingal County Council said that it had been told about 105 notices. Therefore, there will be more as not everyone will tell the council due to not being on the council's housing list or whatever. Stop and think about that. There are 105 families with notices of eviction in their hands in Dublin 15 alone, not the whole of Fingal, nowhere else, just in the Blanchardstown area. I have never heard such a thing. It is causing misery.

The tenant in situ scheme was cut from €40 million to €20 million. Solidarity councillors and other councillors are dealing with the misery of it, as are our offices. For example, one family we tried to help to apply for it received a reply that unfortunately given the number of active applications for the tenant in situ scheme being progressed in May and the level of funding available, Fingal County Council was not in a position to review closed applications. The funding was finished. That was the only lifeline to save someone from homelessness.

I will briefly let the Minister know what is happening to the people who are not able to avail of the tenant in situ scheme and end up being homeless. One person who had been living in her accommodation for ten years applied for the tenant in situ scheme, but was turned down. She is pregnant with her third child and has been searching for alternative accommodation for a year without success. Another person has already been in emergency homeless accommodation for three years and has to cross the M50 every day with their children. They do not have space. They are depressed and stressed, naturally enough.

Another person in homeless accommodation lost out on the scheme. The children have no place to move or play and no freedom to grow. One of her sons has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy and needs additional care and attention to support his development, but cannot get it in the conditions the family is in.

Another person who has a notice of termination for 14 November has three children, one of whom is attending an autism class in Dublin 15 and is in fear of the child losing that place if the family has to go into homeless accommodation. Another woman is breastfeeding and there are many others.

A bus driver has been in homeless accommodation in the Celbridge area because he had to vacate the house he had rented since 2006. Is the Minister listening to that? Someone who has been paying another person's mortgage since 2006 is now living in homeless accommodation with mice and cannot sleep at night. The reason I am telling these human interest stories is that these are the repercussions of economic policies of this Government. I am being transported back to 2014 when I was first elected as a TD. We had a homeless epidemic Dublin 15 and now we have another one. I have never seen anything like this. If I do not bring this to the floor with the Minister for Finance, where can I bring it?

What will the Minister's budget do for the scenarios I have outlined? I can send the information for every one of them to the Minister. I am sure he does not need it. Some 105 families have eviction notices and many are in homeless accommodation, yet a land bank is sitting undeveloped because the Government has not taken an interest in it. These are strategic land banks. We could solve the housing crisis in Dublin West if that land was built on. The Minister should be asking questions. He says there is loads of money for the housing crisis. The money the Government is giving to developers to build apartments could have alternatively been used to fund councils to build public homes that are affordable, socially useful and accessible to the people in these testimonies who are on the lowest rung of the ladder of life.

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