Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I am grateful to the Acting Chair and all Deputies for facilitating debate on this urgent legislation in Dáil Éireann this week. I also wish to record my thanks to the members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage for providing the necessary waiver of pre-legislative scrutiny and to the Chief Whip for enabling the Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) Bill 2022 to be debated on Second Stage today.

I am asking the House to pass the Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) Bill 2022 today to enable its early enactment to make emergency provision to defer the termination dates of certain residential tenancies that fall, or would fall, during the period beginning on the day after the date of the enactment of this Bill and ending on 31 March 2023 to mitigate the risk that persons whose tenancies would otherwise be terminated during that period would be unable to obtain alternative accommodation, and to provide for phased arrangements to enable tenancies affected to be terminated over the period from 1 April to 18 June 2023 to assist in managing demands on housing services as a result of such deferred termination.

The number of people entering homeless emergency accommodation has been increasing since the start of this year. There have also been increases in notices of termination from private rental accommodation during this period. My Department and local authorities have taken a number of steps to deal with the situation. Given the extraordinary situation and ongoing increases in the numbers of people accessing emergency accommodation, however, additional emergency measures are now required. This Bill provides for deferment of certain tenancy terminations taking effect over the coming winter emergency period due to the ongoing, acute supply constraints in the residential rental sector and the expected increase in homelessness presentations over the coming period. The Bill seeks to reduce the burden on homelessness services and the pressure on tenants during the winter months.

The Government recognises that although a landlord’s constitutionally protected property right to terminate a tenancy will be constrained by this Bill, it is necessary to take this step to achieve an urgent social objective of preventing tenants being made homeless or having to source alternative accommodation in an extremely constrained market during the coming winter months. To ensure the response is proportionate, the measures in this Bill are limited to the winter of 2022-2023, they will impact only in respect of certain tenancies, and they are calibrated to apply as fairly as possible.

In proposing the termination pause, the Government is balancing the competing priorities of preventing people falling into homelessness and recognising the need to stem fairly the continued exit of small-scale landlords from the private rental sector. The Government is conscious of the need to ensure small-scale landlords remain in the private rental market. With this in mind, the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, has commissioned a comprehensive review of the sector after significant regulatory changes over recent years and the Department will act on its recommendations as soon as practical. Our housing system needs a safe, secure framework for both landlords and tenants.

I am also conscious that, if passed, this Bill provides a window of time for my Department, local authorities, approved housing bodies and NGOs to progress delivery under Housing for All to remove the need for this emergency legislation. The Government is taking significant steps to address the supply constraints in the housing market and to deliver homes for rent and purchase, including social, affordable and cost rental housing. However, there are a number of factors, including the increasing numbers of people experiencing homelessness, increased demand for accommodation resulting from the Ukrainian crisis and significant inward migration, which are combining to create significant difficulties in the provision of emergency accommodation, particularly over the coming months. This is placing additional pressure on homelessness services as we enter the winter period when capacity constraints are extremely tight for emergency accommodation and housing providers generally.

I assure Deputies that the Government, my departmental officials and I are doing everything within our power to mitigate pressures people will face this winter. For tenants who are struggling to meet their obligations to pay rent, in particular due to loss of employment, there are supports available to help. These include the provision of rent supplement and-or the use of additional needs payments from the Department of Social Protection to address individuals' particular needs. Under the supplementary welfare allowance scheme, the Department of Social Protection can make additional needs payments to help meet expenses a person cannot pay from his or her weekly income. This is an overarching term used to refer to exceptional and urgent needs payments and certain supplements to assist with ongoing or recurring costs that cannot be met from someone's own resources and are deemed necessary.

As well as assisting people with fuel, utility bills and repairs, among several other eligible costs, access to additional needs payments is available to assist persons with rent deposits. The social protection schemes are demand-led and payments are made at the discretion of the officers administering the scheme, taking into account the requirements of the legislation and all the relevant circumstances of each case, to ensure the payments target those most in need of assistance. Any person who considers that he or she may have an entitlement to an additional needs payment is encouraged to contact his or her local community welfare service. Otherwise, people may contact the national community welfare office, which will direct callers to the appropriate office.

The housing assistance payment, HAP, is available as a social housing support from local authorities for people who have a long-term housing need. Any household assessed as eligible for social housing is immediately eligible for HAP. Where the circumstances of rent supplement or HAP recipients worsen, they should contact the Department of Social Protection or their local authority, respectively, for any additional help.

This Bill gives us breathing space but it is not a solution to the issues we face. I recognise there are major trade-offs in undertaking such an emergency measure. We need to use this respite to expand capacity by all means available to address the core underlying issues driving our homelessness levels. This means providing more emergency beds, tackling vacancy, using modular homes and improving allocations and relettings to make the most of existing stock. To tackle homelessness in the immediate term, there are more than 500 additional beds due to come on stream in Dublin through a combination of new short-term leasing agreements, the opening of a new facility and the reopening of a facility following temporary closure for essential works. More than half of these additional beds will be operational in the coming weeks and the remainder in the coming months. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive, DRHE, is entering into a leasing agreement to secure the ongoing exclusive use of a further 415 beds that are already in use. The Department has recently given approval to three capital projects in Dublin, one of which will open next month. These will yield an additional 154 emergency beds. A further seven capital projects are being reviewed and have the potential to add a further significant number of emergency beds in Dublin.

Following on from the voids programme of 2020 and 2021, which delivered more than 6,000 units of social housing stock, a new voids programme was introduced for 2022. The allocation of tenancies of void properties is subject to the requirement that a household is on the social housing waiting list and the property is allocated in accordance with the allocation scheme in the relevant local authority area. Homelessness ranks very highly in the order of priorities across all local authority allocation schemes, in recognition that homeless households are particularly vulnerable. The refurbishment and return to use of as many vacant properties as possible, both public and private, can increase available supply and help to alleviate the homelessness situation. Local authorities have been encouraged to be as proactive as possible in returning vacant properties to use by availing of the voids programme funding, their own local authority resources and the use of the buy and renew and repair and lease schemes. I have tasked each local authority to review and improve its allocation and reletting process to ensure each unit is maximised.

The Department is supporting local authorities to acquire homes for social housing for priority purposes, including acquisitions that support a household to exit homelessness and acquisitions with tenants in situto prevent homelessness. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has given local authorities clear instructions and the sanction needed to undertake ramped-up tenant in situpurchases. To expand emergency accommodation in the short term, my Department is also working with the Office of Public Works, OPW, to undertake significant modular home construction. This new delivery mechanism will help swiftly to increase our capacity.

Housing for All continues to deliver homes at scale. Including acquisition and leasing, we are currently projecting that more than 10,000 new social homes will be delivered this year, with record levels of direct new-build construction. It has, yet again, been a year of volatility for the construction sector. The impact of construction products inflation, supply chain issues and rising energy prices have created a difficult delivery environment. However, prices are stabilising and the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, reports supply chain issues are generally resolved. Therefore, we are seeing something of a recovery and will see very strong delivery of social housing in quarter 4.

We have modified the repair and leasing scheme to open up more opportunities to bring accommodation on stream, including by the conversion of commercial units to residential use. Workshops have been held with local authorities to promote increased uptake of the scheme. We are putting a significant focus on the building pipeline for future years and the development of housing delivery action plans have proven very successful in this regard. All local authorities have finalised their plans for social and affordable delivery from 2022 to 2026. These plans will provide an important framework for delivery in the coming years and will be reviewed in light of delivery this year. My Department is also working with the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and Finance on the potential emergency expansion of long-term leasing to deliver an additional 1,000 social housing units. An independent valuation of expressions of interest received is now under way and should be concluded in the coming weeks.

As committed to under Housing for All, the first affordable cost-rental homes are now beginning to come onto the market, some of which were advertised at rates that are 40% to 50% lower than market rent. Cost rental is a State-backed form of tenure aimed at middle-income households under which the price of rent is equal to the cost of building, managing and maintaining the home only and over a set period of time, most usually 40 years. This means prices are not driven by market movements, making them more affordable, and they are not profit-driven. Many cost-rental homes have been tenanted since the passing of the Affordable Housing Act in July 2021, which has facilitated this form of rental tenure.

I turn to the emergency provisions contained in the Bill. It is important, at the outset, to note the exceptions to its provisions. These exceptions are provided in recognition of constitutionally protected property rights and the need to balance the rights of the tenant with those of the landlord. The deferral of notices of termination from taking effect during the winter will not apply where there is a failure by the tenant to comply with his or her obligations under the tenancy. The core rights of a landlord to protect his or her property and to secure a rental income will not be limited by the Bill. Landlords' obligations to their tenants and to third parties, such as neighbours, do not change under the Bill.

I will outline the specific provisions of the Bill, which contains 5 sections. Sections 1 and 5 contain standard provisions dealing with the interpretation, Short Title and collective citation of the Bill. The "winter emergency period" is defined to mean the period commencing on the day after the enactment of the Bill and ending on 31 March 2023.

Section 2 provides for the deferral of a notice of termination where it has been served by a landlord on or before the date of the passing of the Act and specifies a termination date that falls during the winter emergency period, or where a dispute in regard to the termination of a tenancy is referred to the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, under Part 6 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 and a determination order is issued in respect of the dispute that specifies a termination date that falls during the winter emergency period.

In terms of the exceptions, as I have alluded to, the deferral does not apply to a notice of termination where the termination is grounded on the tenant's failure to meet his or her obligations under section 16 of the 2004 Act or where the landlord states in the notice of termination that the reason for the termination is on the ground of a breach of tenant obligations other than to pay rent, on the ground of a breach of a tenant's obligation to pay rent or on the ground that the accommodation no longer suits the tenant's accommodation needs, having regard to the number of bed spaces and the size of the household.

Some concerns have been raised about continuing to allow a landlord to terminate a tenancy during the winter on foot of overcrowding. A number of Deputies have submitted amendments on this issue and we can debate them fully on Committee Stage.

For now, I wish to be clear that the Oireachtas should not seek to prevent a landlord from fulfilling his or her obligations to tenants and their neighbours. Overcrowding can be very serious and a landlord needs the legal right to act to prevent it. It is very rarely used, with less than 2% of all notices of termination referred under it. In reality, only a small such number of notices of termination already issued will be impacted by this exception during the winter emergency period, but it is important in instances of clear health and safety or fire risks.

Section 2(3) of the Bill sets out, in a table, how the deferment of relevant tenancy terminations will operate. As can be seen, the deferment dates operate in a staggered fashion beyond the winter period to ensure that there is no cliff edge at the end of the period, which would put unmanageable pressure on the private rental market and homelessness services. The timing operates to provide proportionately greater protection to those tenants on the shortest termination periods. The aim is to provide additional time to those most in need of extra time to secure alternative accommodation.

Section 3 of the Bill provides that, where a tenant is not in breach of his or her obligations, any notice of termination served by a landlord in respect of a tenancy of less than six months duration during the winter emergency period shall not specify a termination date that falls earlier than 18 June 2023.

Section 4 of the Bill provides for the interoperability of the Bill with the Residential Tenancies Act 2020 introduced to deal with the Covid pandemic. Should a stay on tenancy terminations come into effect under that Act, in the event of people's movements being restricted on public health grounds to within 5 km of their home under section 31A health regulations made by the Minister for Health, the revised termination date that applies to affected tenancies in an area under that Act would apply, if later than the relevant deferred termination date under this Bill. The Bill also provides that a tenant shall not accrue rights under Part 4, Security of Tenure, of the Act of 2004 by virtue of the operation of the deferred, or later, termination dates required under this Bill. The Bill is framed in a proportionate and fair manner in its limitation of landlord’s constitutionally protected property rights.

As legislators, we have shown throughout the pandemic how we can work together quickly to help tenants. I think that we can all appreciate and recognise the sentiment behind this Bill, a sentiment that I believe is shared by the vast majority of Deputies. This Bill will deliver enhanced tenancy protections when they are most needed over the coming winter months. The Government is very aware of the increasing pressure on homelessness services, the limited supply of rental accommodation and the struggles that people will face over the coming winter months. These temporary and emergency measures will protect tenants from the prospect of homelessness by deferring any no fault tenancy terminations from taking place this winter. We will use this breathing space to ramp up emergency supply.

Improving standards, security and affordability for tenants is a key priority for this Government. We will continue with the implementation of Housing for All and significantly increase the supply of housing across the country. While this emergency Bill is necessary and will provide assistance to tenants in the short term, I want to underline that the only solution into the medium and longer term to the crisis in the rental sector and in the wider housing sector is sustainably and quickly to increase our supply of new housing for both rent and purchase. Landlords, big and small, continue to have a key part to play in the provision of a balanced and affordable rental market. Today, the Government is asking the sector to accept limitations on their rights, as property owners, for the greater good. I acknowledge that fact and thank them for their contribution to meeting the challenges that we are now facing. The Government will ensure that we have a rental market that is fit for purpose and this is something that we will return to when we launch the first year review of Housing for All in the coming weeks. I commend this Bill to the House.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The most recent reports from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage tell us that homelessness in the State is that the highest level ever recorded since the modern reporting method was introduced. As the Minister of State knows, in August there were over 10,800 adults and more than 3,000 children in Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage-funded emergency accommodation. The Minister of State also knows that the real level of homelessness, including adults and children in emergency accommodation funded by other Government Departments, is much higher. The latest figures from the Department of Justice tell us that there are more than 4,500 adults and children with the legal right to remain in this country and refugee status, who are trapped in direct provision, essentially using it as emergency accommodation. We know that on any given night, Tusla-funded domestic violence refuges hold about 600 women and children fleeing coercive control and domestic and sexual violence. At any one time, there are between one and 200 adults and some children in religious institution-run emergency accommodation not funded by the State. On homelessness in terms of rough sleepers, we know that there are at least 100 people on any given night in those areas where they are counted. That actually means that tonight, the number of adults and children in one form of emergency accommodation or another or sleeping rough on the streets is about 16,200. That does not include the unaccounted homeless - all those adults and children who are in what is known as own-door transitional accommodation funded by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and the many thousands of people who are sofa surfing. Whatever way it is counted, we have the worst homelessness crisis in the modern history of this State. Since Deputy O'Brien has been the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and he is almost approaching his halfway mark, almost all categories of homelessness have increased. In his almost two and a half years in charge, adult homelessness is up 25%. The highest level of homelessness among single adults has been recorded, and is up 19%. The number of families with children in emergency accommodation is up 28%, and the number of children in such accommodation is up 25%.

The question has to be asked as to why this is happening. What is it that is going on, since this Government took office, that is leading to this catastrophe? The central reason why homelessness is spiralling out of control is because of the low, and continually missed, social housing targets of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. First of all, those targets are too low. I keep making the point that this Government actually has a lower social housing output than was previously included in the original Fine Gael national development plan, but the Department is not even meeting that target. In 2020 we fell short of social housing targets by 25%, and in 2021, it was 30%. That is 5,969 social homes that should have been delivered that have been lost to the system. If we want to know why so many people are currently homeless, that is the key missing part of the answer. The Minister of State knows that as of the halfway point of this year, only 20% of the targeted 9,000 social homes will be delivered. We will wait eagerly to see what is the final output. On top of that, despite the fact that we were calling for the reintroduction of the tenant in situscheme last year, through which local authorities would buy properties with HAP, RAS or rent supplement tenants in situ, that has only been reintroduced recently and the instruction to the local authorities is not strong enough. I will come back to that point later. The affordable housing targets themselves are an embarrassment. They are so low as really to suggest that this Government is not serious about either cost rental or affordable purchase, and even those low targets cannot be met. Worse still, we still do not have any meaningful action on raising the thresholds for social housing eligibility, so people who cannot actually afford to buy or rent in the market also cannot access social housing supports and are left languishing in homelessness.

At some point there has to be a lightbulb moment when the Minister of State's Government realises that in fact, the cause of this homeless problem is not what is going on in the private rental sector. That is a trigger and it is not helping. It is the Government's failure, policy, inaction and missed targets. That is why today the Minister of State is bringing forward this emergency Bill, a Bill, in fact, that the Minister of State's party did not want to introduce. Indeed, several days before it was approved at Cabinet, the Minister of State's party leader, the Tánaiste, was very hostile to its introduction in his public remarks. It is the Government's housing policy failure that has led us to where we are. Some 19 of our local authorities have no emergency accommodation on any given night and the rest are almost full to capacity.

Let me be very clear. As the Minister of State is aware, we have been calling for this Bill for some time. We have always wanted a temporary winter ban on evictions to give us some breathing space and we are supporting this legislation. However, I must say that there significant weaknesses with the Bill and with the content of the Minister of State's speech in terms of how the Government intends to use the breathing space. I will deal with them in the remainder of my time.

On the overcrowding provisions of this Bill, a big mistake has been made. The Minister of State is absolutely right that a very small number of notices to quit are made under those provisions. However, the majority of the people who receive those notices to quit are large families. They are Travellers, Roma people or families from certain African countries who, for completely legitimate cultural reasons, have more children.

When they become homeless, and the Minister knows the figures, they spend three or four years in emergency accommodation. In fact, the Minister in 2020 introduced a special provision for local authorities to be able to buy large vacant homes on the private market to try to get those families out of emergency accommodation and yet he is now giving an opportunity to landlords to evict such families. That will have devastating consequences. I plead with him not to do this. There is no need for it and that measure should be removed from the Bill.

The Minister is also creating a loophole because some unscrupulous landlords who are now unable to issue a notice to quit, for example on the grounds of sale or use by a family member, could use this measure because for several years, they have had a family in their unit that is larger than is provided for in the outdated 1966 overcrowding legislation, and they can use this provision as grounds for eviction. Not only is the Minister jeopardising the well-being of very vulnerable larger families, particularly Travellers, Roma and some African families, but he is also creating a loophole for a small number of unscrupulous landlords to exploit. Even if the Minister listens to nothing else we say, I urge him to remove that provision between now and tomorrow.

It is disappointing that there is no additional provision for those people whose due date falls before the commencement of the Act. I know the same level of provision cannot be provided because of the way the legislation is designed, but the Minister could have done something in terms of extra discretion for the Residential Tenancies Board when deciding on those cases where people are forced to overhold because they have no access to emergency accommodation or alternative permanent housing to give them more time. The issue of the commencement date of the Bill is key. We need the Minister to be clear about when it will commence so people know when they are getting protection.

Let us also not forget that council tenants get no protection in this legislation because, of course, they are not tenants as registered under the Residential Tenancies Act. Travellers on either official or unofficial halting sites get no protection. The Minister will remember that when the most recent ban on evictions was introduced, a circular was issued to the local authorities to urge them to accept the spirit of this legislation in their practices. I urge him to do the same again. I am concerned there was no reference to that in the Minister's opening speech.

Of course, as the Minister said, and he is right, a ban on evictions, and especially a temporary ban, is not a solution even though it gives tenants breathing space. I must say that the Minister's speech made me even more concerned than I already was at the fact that the Government has no comprehensive emergency plan to take advantage of these five months to ensure we are not in the same place come April of next year. In fact, from what I heard in the Minister's speech, all that is being considered in respect of additional accommodation is 654 emergency beds in Dublin. While they would be welcome, that is not enough. I have outlined over and over again what needs to be done. We need a circular to be sent to the local authorities telling them with regard to the tenant in situscheme to suspend the scheme of letting and ensure that the local authorities buy, subject to price and the structural condition of the property, irrespective of where the social housing applicant is on the scheme of letting. Without that measure, we will continue to see some councils, such as Kerry County Council, not engaging; councils such as the one in my area only engaging when households have length of time on list; and others responding to the Minister in the spirit in which he has raised it.

We also need upfront funding for local authorities to acquire derelict and vacant properties. Without that, there will no significant movement in that regard. We need the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to do what the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth has done, that is, sign a contract for 1,000 high-grade, good-quality, fully fire compliant modular homes to be put in place in the next five months. That is achievable and can be done with the right political will. We need the Minister to use emergency planning powers to get those units on site. We need to cut the bureaucracy imposed on local authorities and approved housing bodies. That is among the principal reasons, along with the pandemic and Brexit, they are behind on their targets.

As the Minister knows, we are supporting the Bill. I urge him to act in the spirit of the legislation in respect of the issues around overcrowding and the circular to local authorities on council tenants and Travellers. I call on him to extend those protections and do much more to ensure that come 1 April next year, we are not in exactly the same position because the Government has again missed its social housing targets.

Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am disappointed with the legislation that has been brought forward. While we support it and recognise there is a need for an emergency ban on evictions, and there are parts of the legislation we welcome, the Minister has missed an opportunity to go further, which he should have taken.

Child homelessness in Cork has increased by 40% in the past 12 months. Our homeless figures are now at record levels not only in Cork but nationally. The hidden homeless have not been covered in this debate. Those include people who are couch-surfing and rough-sleeping, those in domestic violence centres and families who are in boxrooms in multigenerational households because there is nowhere else for them to go. According to the Simon Community, there could be up to 290,000 people in those situations, including families and children.

At one time, when you got a notice to quit, it was a devastating blow. It meant upheaval, the packing of boxes, stress and trying to find alternative accommodation. It did not, however, mean homelessness and that is what it means now. For the vast majority of people, a notice to quit is an eviction into homelessness.

This legislation is welcome. It does one thing but it does not go far enough. It gives people breathing space for the winter, which is security they need. It gives people room at least to enjoy their Christmas. On daft.ietoday, there are only ten properties available for rent in Cork for less than €1,500. This is not a functional rental sector. There are over 200,000 people living in Cork. How is anyone meant to secure a property when those are the figures involved? On airbnb.ie, 153 properties are available to rent for a short stay of over a week. At the end of quarter 2 of this year, there were 9,000 vacant properties in Cork city and county. The Minister spoke earlier about getting local authorities to do more but he needs to do more and give local authorities the necessary funding. He needs to get rid of all the red tape and bureaucracy that requires local authorities to go to the Department in Dublin and return again. He should give them the funding in advance in order that they can deal with these issues.

We need more properties for rent and more social housing. People who are faced with a notice to quit do not have the option of finding a property on airbnb.ieand they cannot squat because they will be arrested. The reality is that this legislation is not enough. It needs to be a part of a suite of measures. We need a rent freeze and one month's tax credit given back to people. We need real protection for renters and a big uptick in the delivery of social housing.

We have heard from the Taoiseach and the Minister about start-ups and what is being done in Ireland. The facts are that under this Government's watch, rents are at the highest levels they have ever been. House prices are at the highest levels they have ever been. Homelessness is also at the highest level it has ever been. Fine Gael has been in power for 11 years and Fianna Fáil has been supporting Fine Gael for the past six and a half years. The buck stops with the Government and no one else.

I am dealing with 14 people who are overstaying; whose eviction dates have passed. People were looking forward to this Bill because they thought the Government would protect them. It does not. Their eviction dates have now passed and those people will have nowhere to go unless they are going to overstay and be brought to court. This legislation does not protect those people. I have read the Bill from cover to cover and those protections are not there. It is not a long Bill and there is nothing in it for people who are overstaying. Deputy Ó Broin and I have submitted amendments. We are bringing forward a set of amendments that we feel are credible. We will try to strengthen the Bill. We support this Bill but we ask the Minister to consider our amendments and those of others because we need to ensure this Bill is fit for purpose.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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As Deputies Ó Broin and Gould have said, Sinn Féin will be supporting this Bill. However, it is a pity that the Government has been dragged kicking and screaming to this point. The notice to quit file in my office has in recent months filled up at an alarming rate.

Moreover, from the speeches that have been made on a daily basis in this Chamber, I know it is the same for every other Deputy.

Families with young children on notices to quit, many of whom are in receipt of HAP, are presenting to my office on a weekly basis. They are in absolute fear as they face homelessness due to the lack of social and affordable homes and emergency accommodation in the Dublin 15 area. In fact, there are zero such homes available. Can we end this nonsense that people on HAP are deemed to be socially housed? They are not. They have absolutely no security of tenure and that is the essence of a person being socially housed.

Many of these are families are in circumstances where they have lived and reared their families in their home for many years. Their children are settled in the area with their school and friends. They play sports, are involved in dancing and have family living all around them. They have a full support base and their lives are rooted in these areas. They grew up in and lived and worked there and now they face homelessness and, particularly in Dublin 15, they have to move away from their own community because there are zero places to rent and there is no homeless accommodation available.

They face the daily grind of having to move out of Dublin 15, in many cases to unsuitable accommodation. This can be coupled with two bus rides to get their children to school every day, no proper facilities to prepare a home-cooked meal upon their return and no proper bedrooms for the children to play. When I was working for Tusla, one of the most heartbreaking pieces that I had to deal with on a regular basis was bringing children to a family resource centre for them to have their birthday party or any type of celebration, be it communion or confirmation. That is the reality of people living in homeless accommodation and it is completely heartbreaking.

The Bill needs to be enacted as soon as possible to provide for those who may be facing eviction this winter. The despair and fear of any family looking at homelessness this close to Christmas must be incredible. In fact, the fear at any time of the year is appalling.

Many people are saying that this is fine and that we have a short break up to the winter but what will happen after that? The Housing for All strategy on social and affordable housing has failed miserably. As for the statistics that were read out here today, on every metric the Government has failed to deal with the housing crisis.

In the case of people who are not in breach of their obligations and who through no fault of their own have been issued a notice to quit; what are their prospects now? What is the availability of a social or affordable home or short-term emergency accommodation in their community? It is not likely, because the Government's housing strategy will not provide either in the short term and certainly not when this eviction Bill ends.

Section 2 of this Bill allows for landlords to evict a family for overcrowding. Again, as has already been said, this is wrong and this provision has to be removed. When a family has initially rented the property - this happens quite often when people will be staying in the property and are quite happy to stay there - they may have a family of one, two or three children, depending on family size. If they are on HAP, they will only be given property for one-bed or two-bed accommodation, if that is what their need is. They may then have another child. Those people are facing eviction now. If an unscrupulous landlord wishes to do that, the Government has given them the get-out clause to do so. This is unfortunate and this must be removed.

I also ask the Minister of State to accept the Sinn Féin amendment on property holders who themselves are in danger of homelessness. I am currently dealing with one constituent who is a doctor and who has moved back home after a number of years away. He is currently living in a hotel and is unable to get back into a house. We need to provide support for the person who is in the house, as well as providing support for the person who is trying to get back into their own home. That is something that has been missed at the moment.

This Bill brings a short-term solution and a small breathing space for families facing homelessness but it is not a long-term solution. That is what I and people fear in the coming months.

Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour)
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I may not use the entirety of my allotted time but I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill on behalf of the Labour Party this afternoon in a debate that is long overdue. As remarked upon by Deputy Ó Broin, some representatives from Fine Gael were actively resisting this Bill up until recently even though it was clear to all of us that this type of legislation was needed. The very need for this Bill in the first place is a symptom of the State’s basic failing to house its own citizens and to house all of those others for whom the State has responsibility at present.

This is a symptom of the Government’s shocking over-reliance on a private rental sector and the logical conclusion of a policy that is being maintained and is leading to a situation where simply not enough social and affordable homes are being built and provided for those who need them.

Everyone is suffering from this broken housing model. These are young people, those going through separation and those on low pay. The knock-on effect of a broken housing model hits us all as parents and colleagues, and the public services often have to bear the cost of this broken system presided over by the Government.

Nowhere is this more true than in the situation that obtains in respect of HAP tenants, as alluded to by other colleagues and, time and again, not just in the context of this debate, but this morning also in the context of the People Before Profit debate on social and affordable housing. In a market where rents are constantly increasing, it is nearly impossible for HAP recipients to find alternative accommodation in the rental sector. Yet they are still subject to no-fault evictions for reasons of sale, renovation or the moving in of family by the landlord. The definition of family here is very broadly defined.

The Simon Community recently reported that there are no properties currently available for rent within normal HAP rates. As an experience, that is not unfamiliar to all of us operating in our constituencies representing and advocating for people who are HAP tenants and who may lose their tenancy. This results in HAP tenants becoming homeless upon receipt of notices to quit being issued by the private landlords. Things are now so stark that even this Government knows that an eviction ban is necessary to prevent homelessness figures from skyrocketing this winter.

Let us be clear, our homelessness services and emergency accommodation services simply cannot cope. What we saw in Dublin Airport last weekend is unforgivable for a wealthy, liberal, open democracy. We must also be clear that it is not those fleeing war in Ukraine who are causing our housing crisis. Let us be very clear on that point. The housing crisis is being caused by a problem being compounded by bad Government policy; a policy it seems incapable of ditching.

Last month we saw a record high of homeless people, with some 10,800 individuals seeking emergency accommodation. Among these are 3,220 children, and older people with complex health needs who never envisaged themselves to be in this situation.

We also have workers who work for the emergency services who sleep in their own facilities at work with no idea of where to go. We have come across these situations of people who are working for the State. This is completely extraordinary and is the reality behind the numbers. These are real people living in an uncertain and often miserable situation with consequences both now and in the future.

As the Labour Party has pointed out, an eviction ban alone will not solve the homelessness crisis. Instead, it needs to be paired with adequate long-term preventative measures including limiting the grounds that allow landlords to evict tenants as per our Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill, which we debated a number of months ago, by reducing reliance on the volatile market of private landlordism, and by establishing a strong public housing system yet again. We cannot apply just another short-term sticking plaster until the show moves on. The media and others may get fixated on the next scandal. There is always a scandal down the road and cases which are difficult to consider but many of those 10,000-odd people will still be in the same boat next week. The measures in this Bill will certainly prevent those who are at risk of becoming homeless from doing so but will not make a single unit available on a long-term basis for anybody.

That is why the Labour Party is deeply concerned that the grounds for eviction are not strong or strict enough in the original Act. What we have before us today is not a long-term solution and is simply a stay of execution for many tenants who are at risk.

We know and they know that, when March rolls around, the wide range of reasons for which tenants can be evicted will again be exercised by landlords. The Minister of State knows this, as do we all, but we sometimes prefer to cover our ears, close our eyes and simply hope that the problem will go away. As asset prices continue to rise - and house prices are continuing to rise albeit at a slower rate than over the past three years - the reality is that landlords will try to realise the value of their assets and sell their properties. That is basic economics. It is how this works.

We need actions rather than words. It is vital that we take steps to restrict the grounds for eviction. As demanded in the Labour Party amendments we will debate later on, we must prevent landlords from evicting tenants for reasons of sale unless the tenant in situand the local authority have been offered the property first. My colleague, the Labour Party housing spokesperson, Senator Moynihan, and the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage have been very clear that, when the RTB is notified of an eviction, the local authority should also be notified to ensure clarity on the situation and the demand in each local authority area. It is incredible that this connectedness is not in place and that these systems are not networked properly.

Evictions on the grounds of overcrowding fail to recognise the nuance of the housing crisis. While it is never ideal for people to live in overcrowded accommodation, an overcrowded home is better than no home at all. Tenants who were forced by the inaction of the State on the housing crisis to reside in overcrowded accommodation should not be evicted and left homeless.

Landlords should only be allowed to evict a tenant to move in family members in circumstances where they are direct family members such as spouses and children. We have seen shocking abuse of this measure in Ireland with distant third cousins and imaginary nieces being touted as new tenants, thereby providing landlords with a reason to evict long-standing tenants to free up their properties.

Fundamentally, the only way to end this vicious cycle is to increase the State supply of social and affordable housing. Not only is this a moral imperative, as report after report has shown, it is the right thing to do financially and economically. However, as it stands, there are more than 60,000 households being socially supported within the private sector. This makes no sense. Rather than investing today to solve the problems of the future, we throw good money after bad on temporary measures such as HAP, income supports and emergency accommodation. A lot of temporary measures that were introduced a number of years ago have now been embedded in the system and are proving to be very costly. Of course, we would like to see HAP, RAS and other measures only used on a temporary basis at a time when there is sufficient housing to meet the needs of people across the country.

Let us take HAP as the obvious example. As rental markets spiral, HAP rates have to increase to keep up, with those State payments ending up in the hands of landlords. It is more cost-effective for the State to acquire the housing in which the HAP tenants are in siturather than to pay out these perpetual subsidies and supports. This is a pure waste of taxpayers' money in the long term. It is totally bonkers. The direction of travel needs to change. Tenants should be in social housing, which provides increased security of tenure as they are no longer at the mercy of landlords. Even the targets in Housing for All will again be missed this year.

We need to return to a public housing model and the idea that this country could build necessary accommodation, even at times when we did not have the resources we have now. That would bring much more stability to our country, improve growth and stabilise our society. The Minister of State knows as well as anybody how much focus is now on housing, which has become a real issue across our society, and on the question of whether the political system can resolve this problem. There is a real problem, and a real question is being asked of this Government. To date, the performance has been incredibly disappointing and less than we would expect.

In addition to an extension of the eviction ban, we urge this Government to reduce red tape in respect of the tenants in situscheme and to prioritise the acquisition of housing by local authorities. The Labour Party will be proposing amendments to the Bill, which the Minister of State will have already seen, to ensure that these kinds of mechanisms to end homelessness are joint implemented alongside the overdue eviction ban. Failure to do so will see homelessness figures rise dramatically once the ban elapses at the end of March and evictions on a staggered basis become the reality again in the middle of next year. I do not believe the Minister of State or any of us want us to be back in that situation next March, discussing another eviction crisis. If we can resolve the issue now, let us do so. However, it will require a refocusing of Housing for All and more resources for social and affordable housing. That is the trick. That is how this will be resolved. Let us not wait until more children, elderly people and vulnerable groups are shamefully put out on the streets of cities and towns across this country.

Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank the Minister of State for bringing this important legislation to the House in such a speedy and timely manner. It is a sensible move that seeks to protect renters from eviction. I acknowledge the work of Department officials in drafting this Bill and the work of the Attorney General’s office in ensuring that its provisions are constitutional, legally defensible and strike a balance between property rights and protection of renters at this difficult time for so many.

The Minister arranged a briefing for the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage and we were given the time to discuss and ask questions on the draft Bill. It was agreed unanimously by the committee to waive pre-legislative scrutiny in order not to delay and to ensure that we can pass this law as soon as possible to protect renters.

I reiterate the recommendation from the committee that, where a notice to quit is issued and the RTB is notified, the relevant local authority should also be informed at that time. That was a strong recommendation from the committee following that session. It may not be easily included in the primary legislation but I urge the Minister of State to take that recommendation on board and to consider what is the best method for the local authority to be informed and made aware of a notice to quit and the date on which the tenancy will expire under this law, which relates to the length of tenancy, so that the local authorities can monitor and manage homelessness challenges.

I also ask the Minister of State to note the submission received by the Oireachtas committee from Threshold with regard to his Bill. I am sure he will agree that Threshold is a leading organisation in preventing homelessness and a crucial source of independent information and support for those at risk or experiencing homelessness. Threshold stated:

Threshold welcomes the introduction of the emergency measures contained in the Bill and commends the government for having listened to homelessness organisations and others who have been advocating for such an intervention. The rationale for the Bill is clear and well-rehearsed, but the impact will be significant. It will prevent homelessness for thousands of individuals during the winter period.

However, there are two areas which require further consideration. They have already been outlined by others. One relates to overcrowding and the other to those in rental arrears. The suggestion is that those renters who have engaged with the Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, and who are working to actively engage on repayment should be allowed to avail of the deferred termination dates. I ask the Minister of State to consider these suggestions. We can discuss them on Committee Stage.

The Bill introduces emergency provisions that place a moratorium on evictions between now and the end of March 2023. We are conscious of the difficult winter ahead resulting from increases in the cost of living and primarily the increased electricity and gas prices caused by Russia’s war on the people of Ukraine, with whom we stand in support and solidarity against the weaponisation of energy supplies.

We are also conscious of the difficulty people experience in trying to secure alternative accommodation at this time and the great pressure on homelessness services across the voluntary, community, NGO and local authority sectors. I take this opportunity to thank all those who work in that sector. It is a difficult and stressful job and those people help thousands of people every year when they need it most. I have worked with my own local authority in Wicklow and I have no hesitation in saying that the staff in the housing section do a fantastic job, as do staff in all of our local authorities. Many go way above and beyond their job descriptions to help our constituents with their housing needs, often in emergency situations. In order to assist those staff in our local authorities, I hope the Minister of State will consider the Oireachtas committee's recommendation on local authorities being informed of notices to quit at the time of issue. The phased arrangements to enable affected tenancies to be terminated over a period to assist in managing demand on housing services as a result of such deferred termination also constitute a sensible measure.

While this Bill is a welcome measure that will provide some temporary relief for renters, the longer-term solutions are the provision of affordable rental properties of a good design and high standards under secure long-term tenancies. I refer here to the cost-rental model. Cost-rental is a core Green Party housing policy and I am proud that we introduced and legislated for the provision of cost-rental accommodation last year in the Affordable Housing Act 2021.

That was only just over a year ago. Despite comments from others, you cannot just switch on affordable housing schemes and cost-rental like a light bulb but we are doing so. It is a concept that is new to Ireland but it has proven to be highly effective in the European rental sector and especially in Vienna. We met with our Austrian Green Party colleagues prior to passing that legislation to learn from their model and to ensure that cost-rental will work for Ireland.

The Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage is currently going through a series of meetings with local authorities from across the country to engage with them and learn from their delivery of housing across the range of social housing provision, through direct builds, with approved housing bodies, AHBs, through affordable purchase schemes and through delivery of cost-rental directly, with AHBs and with the LDA. The figures we received from the local authorities are encouraging. The pipeline of projects is strong and they are confident of meeting their targets. They have told us they are well funded and resourced but that there are challenges caused by inflation and staff recruitment and retention. My constituency in Wicklow has actually exceeded its social housing delivery targets. It has just progressed its first affordable purchase scheme and in recent months I have attended the opening of four social housing schemes across the county with the Minister, and more recently in Bray with An Taoiseach.

In engagement with the LDA, we have heard of its commitment to the delivery of cost-rental across its many projects. Across ten projects nationwide, its near-term deliveries are at design, planning and construction stage and will provide over 5,000 homes. That is public housing on public land, including affordable and cost-rental, that is secure, to a high standard of design and with good transport links. Just up the road from me in Shanganagh they are well advanced on delivery of 597 homes. That consists of 200 social apartments, 306 cost-rentals, 40 affordable purchase apartments and 51 affordable purchase houses. That is one example of what the LDA will deliver. It still surprises me to this day when I hear Opposition spokespersons criticise the LDA and not want it to construct houses, although it is possible they have changed their position by now.

The legislation we will pass this week will offer a short-term but very necessary protection for renters. It has been widely welcomed. However, we must continue with determination and using every method available to provide housing. We must engage with investors, large-scale landlords and smaller landlords with one or two homes. We must invest public tax money wisely to provide the best return for our people and long-term returns on that tax money, to activate land, ensure compact growth and compact living and inject action into stalled developments and uncommenced planning consents. We must find that spot where viability and affordability align and work with all players to deliver. State investment must provide a return to homeowners and renters through the delivery of affordability and secure tenures. The output must be sustainable and compliant with our carbon targets, using all available alternatives in building materials and design, bringing as many vacant and under-used buildings as possible into productive use. We must continue do that at scale and pace with the targets set out in Housing for All.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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The Social Democrats will be supporting this Bill. I have tabled a number of amendments to improve it. It is unfortunate that there will only be 60 minutes for dealing with amendments today. We will likely only be able to discuss one or two of the amendments rather than all those that have been submitted, which does not do the legislative process justice. This Bill is needed fast and quick but we should have had at least a few hours to discuss the proposed amendments.

The reason this Bill is in front of us is because the Government's housing plan is failing. It is as simple as that. Homelessness is at record levels. Rents are at record levels. House prices are at record levels. The number of people living in emergency accommodation for homeless people has increased by 30% in the last 12 months while the number of children in emergency accommodation has increased by 47%. That is not to mention people living in direct provision, people fleeing domestic violence and living in refuges, people who are sleeping rough on the streets or in tents or people sleeping on couches and floors. That is not to mention the hundreds of thousands of people who are still living in their parents' homes even in their late 20s and 30s, when they do not want to be there. They want to be able to have some form of independence and get on with their lives.

I was struck by the comments the Minister made towards the end of his speech. He said "The Government will ensure that we have a rental market that is fit for purpose". With housing, the Government is always saying "We will do this" or "This will happen in the future". Halfway through its term, it is still telling us things will happen in the future. Fit for purpose for whom? I have not heard anything from the Government to indicate that it intends to make renting fit for purpose by giving renters proper security so they are not always looking over their shoulders and worried in the pit of their stomachs about what will happen if they receive a notice to quit. In many senses, it is that insecurity that really gnaws at people when they are renting, even if they have not received a notice to quit or have been in the place for years. It is that worry. Things might be going well in their lives and in their kids' lives. Their child's development might be going well, they might be settling into school and overcoming different challenges or learning difficulties they have. There is still that absolute worry of what will happen if they get the notice to quit. When they do get the notice to quit, all of that kicks in and they can see the years of struggle and the progress they have been making in getting through those challenges in life unravelling in front of them. I do not think there is a proper awareness of that in the Government. If there was, we would not be seeing these kinds of piecemeal, emergency, reactive measures. We would be seeing reforms brought in to make renting secure for renters, as is the case in most other European countries.

The Government is failing to meet its own targets on housing. The big promise of this Government on housing was that we would be building additional supply and new supply. The number of social homes in the housing delivery targets for this year and last year were nearly all meant to be additional homes. That was the big promise. We were promised 9,500 new-build additional social homes last year. Instead we got about half of that number. We were promised a couple of thousand affordable homes from the Government last year but we got zero affordable purchase homes. We were promised 350 cost-rental homes but only got 65 of those were tenanted. For new build social housing delivery this year, less than 2,000 homes were delivered in the first half of the year when there were 9,000 additional new build social homes promised. For affordable purchase and cost-rental accommodation, in both categories we only have a few hundred delivered so far this year, when we need thousands of those to meet the Government targets. Indeed, we need a lot more than that to meet demand. Not only that, but somehow the Government is not even spending its full capital allocation on housing. That is scandalous given the situation we are in. It is 30% behind its own targets at this time of the year. If that is made up towards the end of the year, rather than the shortfall being made up through building a sufficient number of new builds and additional supply, it will be made up the way Governments have always done it, by buying up existing supply towards the end of the year to try to meet its targets. It is certainly better than not doing that but it is the additional supply that really is needed.

The Government has spoken about needing these emergency measures for breathing space but there is no sign of what its plan is for that breathing space. Regarding the tenant in situ scheme, I am very concerned about the ad hocand haphazard way it has been implemented across the country. It varies from local authority to local authority and even within local authorities we are getting mixed messages about how it is being implemented. I appreciate that it is a new scheme but the Government could give more direction to local authorities on that. That would be useful and is something the Minister might look at urgently. I agree with the points made by previous Deputies about local authorities being notified of notices to quit. That would be useful, especially in terms of local authorities being proactive about potential purchases.

There is no question that the social housing limits must be raised. All of us are aware of situations where people who have been on housing waiting lists, who are on low incomes and cannot afford to meet their housing needs themselves are being knocked off housing waiting lists because they have gone slightly above the thresholds. I know of people in my constituency who did overtime during Covid when others were out sick just to keep production going, in food production and so forth.

They got knocked off the housing waiting list because their earnings went above the threshold because they were covering for people through once-off overtime and once-off sickness leave due to Covid. Others, who have got small pay increases from their employers to meet the cost-of-living crisis are also getting knocked off the social housing waiting lists. This is a brutal thing that is happening to people, including those who had been on the waiting list for a long time and who were close to having homes allocated to them. They will never be able to meet their own housing needs because the Government has not moved those thresholds up, at least along with the cost of living and inflation.

What happens to people when they do get a notice to quit? It causes absolute devastation, stress, anxiety, and disruption in their lives. Their very first thoughts are about the rest of their family. They are thinking about their children who may already have been suffering with anxiety and mental health issues. Having a notice to quit, where they will be evicted from their home and uprooted from their friends, their family, their GAA clubs and anything else they are involved in with the local community, has a devastating impact.

It must be said that such evictions are not normal practice. This is not what happens in most European countries. In most European countries, it is simply not legal to evict renters who are paying their rent simply because the landlord wishes to sell. They cannot do it in other European countries. It is totally against the law, be it one house or 100 apartments together. It cannot be done. One cannot do this in Austria, Belgium, or the Czech Republic - and we had a delegation from the Czech Republic visiting the Oireachtas today. One cannot do this in Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, or Romania. What is it that we think it is okay or that the Government thinks it is okay for it to happen here?

I welcome this Bill as a temporary measure, but if Ireland was in line with most other European countries, we could not even bring in such a temporary measure, because in those other countries it is permanently in place that one cannot evict people who are paying their rents from their homes simply because the landlord wants to sell. If the landlords in those countries want to sell, then they go ahead and sell, and there is not a problem.

We must also recognise that with increased property prices and the value of homes, properties, and landlord properties, a lot of that value is given from public investment and public infrastructure. Much of the value of housing and the value of homes is because of the roads that have been put in, the water infrastructure, the wastewater infrastructure, community facilities, public transport and so forth. That gives a lot of the values. It is not simply the case that this is a private asset that has gone up in value simply from the hard work of the person who owns the property. Much the value has gone in from public investment, not to mention the public subsidies through HAP and so on, which inflate rents and which also increase the values of homes, including the value of those homes from which people are being evicted.

I want to reference some of the amendments I have tabled for the Bill. Before I do this, however, I implore the Minister and the Government to look, in addition to this, at what immediate measures can happen to protect people for example like the tenants in Tathony House, where more than 35 households are being evicted. This is 100 people, an entire block, facing mass eviction. The Tyrrelstown amendment, which was brought in some years ago supposedly to prevent these mass evictions, is not working. There are too many get-out clauses in it and loopholes that can be exploited. If the Government is looking at emergency measures to stop people being evicted then it should be looking at that and closing down those loopholes. Ultimately, the Government needs to get out of emergency measures and bring in long-term reform.

I have some sympathy for landlords who complain about all of the constant legislative changes. This is not the way to reform the sector. We need one set of changes that bring in proper security for renters. We must stop messing around in the sector with incremental changes causing haphazard, piecemeal changes. We must bring in proper long-term reforms that give stability to the sector, and then there does not have to be multiple changes to legislation each time during the year.

Before I discuss the amendments I have tabled for Committee Stage, I must mention the concerns that have been articulated about the Bill by the Irish Traveller Movement. The measures will not protect Travellers from being evicted from temporary accommodation, which is something they had flagged previously. This is specifically relevant in the context of the Irish Traveller Movement noticing an increase in the number of queries and cases they are dealing with around evictions. It is particularly relevant because, as we are aware, Travellers were particularly over represented in homelessness in 2019. We do not have complete figures on this but we do have the figures for 2019, when 25% of children in emergency accommodation outside of Dublin were Travellers and 13% of homeless adults were Travellers. This is a complete over-representation for the Traveller community. Their particular concerns around this should be noted and taken onboard by the Government.

As previous speakers stated, there should be a requirement for the local authority to be notified of notices to quit at the same time the RTB is notified. This would potentially assist in the context of tenants in situand with the acquisitions by the local authority. This would provide some time and would potentially take some of the stress out from tenants who are caught in the middle on this. Tenants are incredibly vulnerable when they receive a notice to quit. They are being put in a position where they are not clear what their role is between themselves, the landlord, and the local authority. An acquisition is a very stressful situation for them to be placed in.

With regard to allowing evictions on the grounds that the property is no longer suitable, this should be withdrawn. Threshold has made the case that they have seen an increase in the use of this ground for evicting people. It makes no sense. Threshold argues, for example, that a family with a new child might be evicted into homelessness on these grounds. That does not help anyone. They have argued very strongly that the moratorium should at least be extended to include people being evicted on those grounds. I support that. Threshold has made the case that if this ground is to be retained with regard to overcrowding, for example, then there should be some basis for that such as confirmation from a fire authority that the dwelling is no longer suitable. Threshold also made the point that there needs to be enhanced support for those who are in rent arrears. I have also tabled an amendment on the undermining of tenancy rights that have accrued due to the length of tenancy.

I have tabled amendments in respect of the removal of sale as one of the grounds for eviction. As stated, this is simply not possible or legal in most European countries. I do not see why the Government will not support that. If the Government removed that ground, it could be a game changer for giving renters more security and giving stability into the sector, but also very importantly in reducing the number of people being evicted into homelessness. Even Boris Johnson, when he was UK Prime Minister, had promised to bring in a ban on no-fault evictions. It was not a temporary ban. It was to be a ban on no-fault evictions. Boris Johnson was, in my view, a terrible leader of the Conservative Party. I cannot think of much that he has done or promised to do that is commendable, but he was backing that as a measure. If the Conservative Party can talk about doing that, then one would think that this Government could at least do it as well.

Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
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It is one and a half years since the Minister ended the Covid-19 eviction ban. Since then, homelessness levels have increased almost every single month. We all take having a roof over our heads for granted, but imagine waking up tomorrow to find out that you were going to be made homeless? That has been the reality for 78 families so far this year in Kildare who are tenants in receipt of HAP. I have spoken to many of them. They come into the office in shock wondering how they can keep their family home, keep their kids in school, and get to work. There is a crisis in homeless accommodation, so much so that families have been sent from Kildare to Roscommon for emergency accommodation.

That is 170 km, a two-and-a-half-hour drive and far from schools, support networks and places of employment. It is a scandal.

There are almost 11,000 adults and children in Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage-funded emergency accommodation. This includes 1,483 families with 3,220 children. The Government might say they have a roof over their heads but their childhood is being stolen from them. Can the Minister of State imagine trying to prepare food for a family while helping with homework and dealing with day-to-day family issues? It is hard enough in a three-bed semi-detached house. Imagine what it is like in homeless accommodation.

Families in direct provision are also being deprived of their dignity. They are human beings the same as me and the Minister of State, and we need to treat them with respect and allow them to play their full part in society. I help people in emergency accommodation daily. It is clear the stress of such an existence - and all it is for them is an existence - is having a huge effect on their mental health. They all say homelessness was something that happened to other people until it happened to them. We can and must do better. A home is not a product to be bought and sold for profit but a place of safety, security and privacy. People are not just losing that home. Homes are being taken from families by vulture funds and greedy institutional landlords.

I send my solidarity to the more than 100 residents living in an apartment complex in Dublin who face possible homelessness. The tenants of Tathony House, a 35-apartment block in Kilmainham, received eviction notices last Wednesday. The Government needs to step in and support the residents. The eviction ban worked during Covid but only delayed the problem. As soon as the ban ended, the floodgates opened. Unfortunately, the Government did not take action. It did not use the breathing space to build homes or introduce a credible plan to address this crisis. The Government transfers almost €2.5 million per day in taxpayers' money to private landlords to meet social housing need. It is doing more harm than good and needs to step aside so this crisis can be addressed once and for all.

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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This whole "step aside" thing is not, unfortunately, how democracy works. We had an election. There is a Government. Sinn Féin had its chance to be in that. I would love to see its housing solution because it does not stack up. That is what commentator after commentator has costed and analysed.

I welcome the legislation before us. It is positive legislation and protects vulnerable people from November until the end of March. It should be subject to review thereafter because we saw during Covid that those who are less well-off and who are penalised by paying the highest rents in our country are put to the pin of their collar and are at the whim of landlords. We have seen excellent landlords, but also unscrupulous ones. This gives protection to people who, through no fault of their own, face eviction. There is a sunset clause in the legislation, of course.

The legislation also protects landlords. We have had people from both sides of this argument contact our offices. There are worried landlords who have seen properties trashed or rents not being paid. There are protections in this legislation for such people, but most important and central to the legislation are those who are vulnerable and will struggle to have a roof over their heads and have struggled so for a long time.

Inroads are being made and on Monday the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, was in County Clare officially opening 153 new social housing units. That is delivering on housing and there is much more to come. If anyone saw the RTÉ news on Monday night, County Clare is one of several counties that are ahead of all expectations and of their own aims and thresholds. They will exceed it by 2026. That is not to clap backs but there is a rhetoric time and again that needs to be challenged.

In the spirit of this eviction ban, another group of people is very pressed at the moment. That group comprises small business owners, coffee shops and small retail. They face huge electricity and heating bills and overheads. I argued in the Chamber earlier that, just as we bring in this legislation to protect tenants, we should put a moratorium on and defer the revaluation of commercial rates for small businesses. It has been devastating for some of them in the past week in County Clare who faced a 33% commercial rates hike, on top of electricity and gas bills etc. Budget 2023 did an awful lot to support those people, but it will be taking with the other hand if we allow these increased rates to go ahead. It is in the same spirit of helping people over these difficult few months. We were able to defer commercial rate hikes during Covid and the same should happen as we face this new crisis in the cost of living. Many small businesses face an existential crisis and the sensible and prudent thing would be to defer it.

Counties are bundled together for revaluation processes. Clare is in with Galway, Mayo, Donegal and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. People in those counties who have taken the plunge, gamble and risk to enter small business now face a hike in revaluation bills of 33% or up to 40% on what they faced heretofore. Revaluation does not happen every few years. The last revaluation in County Clare took place in 1862. If we have not had to tackle it from 1862 to 2022, I think we can kick it a little further along the road.

The legislation before us is positive, progressive and has my full support. That sunset clause has to exist in things like this but should be subject to review.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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The Government has been dragged kicking and screaming to implement some form of eviction ban. It has been dragged by pressure from the Opposition, by the growing housing movement, which will be seen on the streets again from 26 November with the Raise the Roof protest, and by the rising homeless numbers and the political pressure that puts on the Government. In that context, the Government says the thing it said was definitely not constitutional before is, all of a sudden, constitutional but, even when dragged and forced to do it, it cannot help but do it in the most minimal way possible, stitching in as many loopholes as it can for landlords to jump through.

One loophole, incredibly, is that in a cost-of-living crisis there is no protection for tenants who lose their jobs and are unable to pay. In the discussion around this in the media before the Bill was published, the Taoiseach and others spoke about those who wilfully refuse to pay not being protected but that is not what is contained here . This is not just about those who wilfully refuse to pay but anybody who cannot pay. Those who have an inability to pay are not protected and can be put on the streets this winter.

Another loophole concerns those who have already been served their eviction notices. I spent time in a woman's house the Monday before last. She got her eviction notice for that day. She is a young woman with four children and is in college studying psychology. She had tried everything to find somewhere else to stay but was unable to, like so many people, so I advised her, as others did, to overhold and tell the landlord she would not leave and make herself and her four kids homeless. She stayed there. The landlord is relatively understanding and said he will not try to evict her again before Christmas but, legally, there is nothing protecting Stephanie and her kids from eviction over this winter despite the fact the Government is introducing an eviction ban.

The other group not protected are those who have received notice now for later on, for example, the eviction notices given to the tenants of 35 apartments in Tathony House, Dublin 8, affecting about 100 people living in the block. The landlord says "I'm selling it" and has issued a notice to quit for the start of June. One renter, James O'Toole, has said he is terrified to go back into the rental market in Dublin with the limited supply available. He has lived in the building since 2009. Many other tenants are similar. The occupants are looking to the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, to enforce the Tyrrelstown amendment, because it is a mass eviction, to stop it. However, there are loopholes in that amendment. The landlord is claiming, and this is a very rich landlord by all accounts, that preventing this mass eviction would cause hardship to the poor landlord. Therefore, the landlord is seeking to mass evict these people. The residents are not taking it lying down. They are protesting outside Dublin City Council on Wood Quay a 3 p.m. this Saturday, 29 October.

In particular, I call for the council in that situation and in Stephanie's situation to buy these properties and prevent people from being made homeless.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Government has been forced to introduce an eviction ban. Over the past four years, People Before Profit has brought in four different Bills proposing eviction bans. The Government has argued against them. It has dragged its heels and resisted. It put up every argument as to why it could not happen and why it was problematic constitutionally, but when sufficient pressure came on, it was forced to introduce it, but, as Deputy Murphy said, in the most minimalist fashion possible.

One of the groups that will suffer as a result of the minimalist approach taken by the Government are people who have already received and past their termination date. Deputy Murphy gave one example and I will give another: a couple and their two children, whose termination date was last Friday week from a home the parents have lived in since they were born in the 1950s. The landlord has multiple properties. They are not suffering any financial hardship. One can only speculate as to why they are selling but I think it is fair to say that, given the number of landlords who are selling up and evicting people consequently, that it has something to do with the extortionately high level of house prices at the moment. Landlords are cashing in and they are doing that precisely on the Government's failure to deal with the housing crisis. Why do property prices go up? They go up because there is a shortage of housing. The worse the housing crisis gets, the more the property of landlords and large property owners is worth. That is the way it works. The more they can charge in rent, the higher the price they can command when they sell. When they think it has reached the peak, they sell and they do not care about the human wreckage they leave behind, in this case by evicting a working family with two children where the parents in this family have lived in the house since the 1950s, because they are cashing in and that is allowed.

I pointed this out here last week. I was the first person in the Dáil to point out that the Government's eviction ban did not protect them. There was not a word in response to that from the Government. Even though it was flagged on several occasions, there was nothing in the Minister of State’s speech to explain why that gap has been left. There is simply no justification. Worse again, what will every single local authority housing section I know of tell anyone who is facing an eviction and has passed their termination date, given the authorities have virtually no emergency accommodation, if they have any at all, and no social housing to offer most of the people in that situation, and there is virtually no affordable housing? What does the State tell people to do in that situation? It tells them to overhold. It is an unspoken but all-pervasive policy. It is not just Deputy Murphy, I and other Deputies who tell people in these situations they have no choice and they will have to overhold but local authority housing departments are also telling them they have to overhold because those departments have nothing for them. However, the Government is not going to protect those people with this Bill. How can the Minister of State justify that? I just do not understand.

We have tabled an amendment on this but, of course, the Government has guillotined the debate tonight so we probably will not reach it. In any event, our amendment was ruled out of order on the basis it represents a charge on the Exchequer to extend the eviction ban to those who have already passed the termination date. I was scratching my head when I heard that one. How is that a charge on the Exchequer? That was done during the Covid eviction ban which the Government was also forced into introducing after weeks and weeks of pressure. How is that a charge on the Exchequer? I would really like somebody to explain that to me. Therefore we cannot debate that amendment and vote on it tonight although we probably would never reach it because the Government has guillotined Committee Stage to 60 minutes. Families are terrified and have nowhere to go. They are all searching daft.ie, myhome.ie, ringing up the place finder section, which is in an equally despairing and hopeless situation, looking for rental properties, and there is no emergency accommodation available for them, but we are not going to protect them. It is flipping outrageous.

The duration of the ban is also outrageous, given the situation. It will end at the end of March. Some of the protections may last until the summer but then we will have thousands of people facing eviction again. It has to be extended for a year at least, as again we are proposing in an amendment. Frankly, it should be extended for the duration of the emergency. The Dáil officially declared a housing emergency in 2018. Again, it was forced to do that because of the Raise the Roof protest when there were 10,000 people out on the streets. People Before Profit put forward a motion on behalf of the Raise the Roof campaign. Finally, after denying it for about five years, the Government conceded there was a housing emergency. If there is a housing emergency, there is no question that we are constitutionally protected in taking emergency measures. I do not buy for one minute the legal arguments the Government used to try to justify not doing that. We have done it before when the Government said we could not, and we are doing it again now. There is an emergency, declared by this House, and that gives the Government the legal constitutional basis on which to protect people from being driven into homelessness.

Most disgustingly, every single child who is made homeless is going to be marked for life. The Government is lucky that in the case of the family I mentioned, they do not want to talk to the media because the parents are terrified their children will be humiliated in school. That is the situation of so many of these families and that is the situation the Government is putting them in. The mental health of children is being put on the rack because they are facing the humiliation of being made homeless. There should be absolute protection against that and it should last until we provide them with alternative, affordable and secure accommodation.

Could we do that in the period of the duration of this eviction Bill? Not on the current policy trajectory of the Government, but would it be possible to make a significant impact over the duration of this eviction ban Bill? It would if the Government were willing to do certain things. First is that it would actually do something about vacant and derelict properties. For example, in my area, there is a building called Kelly’s Hotel. It is owned by the council. It has been empty for around 20 years. I do not know how many times I have brought it up in this Chamber or with the council. At one stage the council wanted to sell it. We kicked up enough of a fuss to stop that. Now it is just sitting there empty. It is perfectly suitable to house people in. Nothing happens. It just sits there. There are Ukrainian refugees desperate for accommodation. There are people 20 years on the housing list. There is no homeless accommodation available in the area. Kids and families are sent into hostels in town when they are going to school in Ballybrack, Sallynoggin or Shankill. It is flipping outrageous that the State itself is sitting on empty properties.

I will mention Tathony House again because if the Government does not do something about that, then the same thing will happen there as happened in St. Helen’s Court. Landlords try to get around the Tyrrelstown amendment, but even if the RTB asserts they cannot do that, the tenants themselves are so stressed that they start to leave. They will be forced out because of the pressure, anxiety and stress. That landlord, with a €700,000 a year rent roll, is claiming he has the right to evict people on the grounds of financial hardship.

Can you believe it? Can you believe the venality and greed of a landlord who would do that to people? Some of the tenants will leave and then the properties will be vacant. Then the landlord can do exactly what a vulture fund does. I refer to an Irish vulture fund. The landlord of Tathony House is an Irish landlord evicting people, one of our so-called own. When tenants leave, a landlord can sit on empty properties, as was done in the case of St Helen's Court for three years. There are 17 empty properties, and the State allows it to happen. It does not take them over.

The Government currently gets 10% of most new private developments. It is a pathetic figure considering that house and rent prices are such that about 70% to 80% of people in the Dublin area could not afford them. The State is getting only 10% of new builds. All the rest will be rented or sold at prices that ordinary working people could not possibly afford. Why do we allow that to happen? Most of the developments in question are on sites that were previously in the ownership of NAMA and that the developers bought from that agency at a major discount. Often they make massive capital gains out of selling these properties. They do not even pay capital gains tax on them in many cases because of the tax loopholes they benefit from. To me, it is obvious what you do in that situation. You do what they do in Finland, for example. In Finland, 25% of any new development has to be social housing and 30% has to be affordable housing. Therefore, 55% of any new development has to be social and affordable housing. One might ask why, in the current situation in Ireland, anything less than 100% should not comprise social and affordable housing. In all seriousness, what is the point of building housing that is not affordable? There is none. The State and the buyer or renter get screwed for massive amounts of money. What is the point in that? The State should buy 100% of the developments. Admittedly, that would be at a cost but there is a way it can be got back. A windfall tax could be applied to the capital gains the people in question will make out of the sale. One could take the money back off them. They should not have got it in the first place. The greatest scandal ever in this State was the disposal of the NAMA property to them. They should not make a cent out of it. We should acquire 100% of the sites and tax the windfall gains made by the developers so we can get the money back. In this way, we would start to have a serious impact.

If those who live in south Dublin drive down the N11 on their way to Wicklow or Arklow, they will see all the apartment complexes being built in the region, some of which are near completion. Currently, we are getting 10% of them. We should be getting at least what the Finnish get in Helsinki, namely, 55%. I would say it should be 100%. The State should buy the complexes and then it could solve the problem. Cherrywood, the biggest residential development in the history of the State, is on what was NAMA-owned land. As things stand, the beneficiaries will be foreign investors, including Dutch pension funds. They will rent at extortionate levels and sell at extortionate prices that nobody can afford. Now there is pressure on the banks to start lending money to people that they cannot really afford, with interest rates going up. Believe it or not, we are actually threatening to do what we did before 2008. There is an alternative. It is for the State to take the property back, buy it all out and deliver it all as affordable and social housing. We built the infrastructure with the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF. We have paid for the roads and parks with public money but private investors will reap the benefit. What we are doing is just insane. The solutions are in front of us if we are willing to take the necessary action.

My last point, which I am making yet again, is on income thresholds. As our motion pointed out today, in 2008 some 48% of households were entitled to social housing or eligible to go on the social housing list. The ESRI points out that because of the Government's failure to increase the thresholds, that was down to 33% by the end of 2019. That means it is well below 30% now. This is happening when more households than ever need the support because house prices and rents have gone up.

There has been a massive stealth cut to the proportion of households eligible for State support. You will not even get social housing because you will be on a list for 20 years, but at least you might get housing assistance payment, HAP, support as an interim, temporary measure. If you are over the threshold, you are goosed. The Government support is very clear about the reason for the delay in raising the thresholds. It states it has to ration social housing. The word "ration" appears on about 20 occasions. That is what it is down to. It is not down to justice or anything like that. Precisely when people need assistance more than ever in accessing housing, the proportion of eligible households has been dramatically cut.

The reason the Government does not want to do what I suggest is because it does not want to acknowledge the scale of the problem. However, one does not solve a problem unless one acknowledges it and how many people actually need State support through the delivery of social and affordable housing and, at a minimum, financial assistance to secure housing they can afford.

Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party)
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I welcome the eviction moratorium, which will provide greater security for tenants and prevent families and individuals from entering homelessness and emergency accommodation, as it did during the Covid pandemic. The winter months can represent the most difficult and stressful time of the year for many families facing significant costs and expenses as we approach the festive season. To be able to provide comfort and security to many households fearing eviction is very welcome. However, we know the measure is a temporary one to provide temporary relief. In many cases, it is simply pressing pause on the inevitable reality.

At the centre of Green Party housing policy are affordability and security. Last year, the Government introduced tenancies of indefinite duration and increased the periods for notices to quit, which will mean no tenancy will have a termination period of less than 90 days. The Land Development Agency will be constructing 30,000 cost rental units.

I believe all parties, the Department and local authorities wish to solve the homelessness crisis. Ongoing measures are being implemented and should continue until we find ourselves in a position akin to that of Finland. Finland's example is one we can follow. It is the only EU country to continuously reduce homelessness. The success of its story is not miraculous; it is down to housing first. I would therefore like to use this opportunity to ask the Minister and his Department to continue to improve and expand our Housing First policy to solve our homelessness crisis.

Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein)
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A Bill such as this is needed because of the situation created by the Government and its broken housing policy. Only this week, people contacted my office in Cashel because they had nowhere to go after their tenancies ended. One case involves a single mother and her children. This family just cannot find accommodation in a market that is strangled through a lack of supply. The mother, who has tried all the local estate agents in an effort to get a house, had to sleep at her neighbour's over the weekend and is now in contact with the council about emergency accommodation. How long is she going to be in emergency accommodation? How suitable will it be for her and her children? What impact will it have on the children's well-being and education? This is the situation that so many people throughout the country are finding themselves in. My party and I will support this Bill because we are talking about people's well-being. We are talking about maintaining for children a life that is as normal as possible under the current circumstances.

The figures show the sheer number of people, of families, who are facing challenges. Since the last ban on evictions ended, the number of adults and children in emergency accommodation has increased to 10,800, according to the August figures.

That is not an exhaustive list, as it does not take account of the women and children in Tusla-funded domestic violence refuges, the adults and children who are trapped in the direct provision system and are using it as emergency accommodation, nor the adults and children who are in hostels that are not in receipt of State funding. Neither does it include those who are sleeping on people's sofas or those families crammed into a spare box room in a friend or relative's house. This is where we are. This is where the Government has led people, by failing to deliver an adequate supply of social and affordable homes. The situation will continue for as long as the Government continues to plan for too few social and affordable homes. Sinn Féin has been calling for months for a ban on evictions during the winter. While the Government may have been initially reluctant to do this because it may force it to admit to the failings of its housing policy, it is obvious that the realities facing thousands of people and families has finally hit home.

This is not a reason for the Government to sit on its laurels, because although it is a much-needed measure, it will not fix the problem. If urgent action is not taken to increase the supply of social and affordable housing over the next five months, we will be revisiting the crisis in April. We need more action on voids and on purchasing homes with tenants in situ. While Sinn Féin will be supporting this Bill and has called for something similar for months, we will be tabling amendments. For instance, we do not support the provision in the Bill to allow for terminations to proceed where the property is overcrowded. This could put large and vulnerable families at risk of long stays in emergency accommodation and could also be used as a loophole for those who cannot proceed with terminations on grounds such as the sale of a property.

Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent)
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I wish to share time with Deputies Canney and Verona Murphy.

Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this very important issue. I will support the Bill's progress on Second Stage today. Over recent months the cost-of-living, energy and housing crises have meant that people are making choices between paying their rent, paying energy bills or having money to put food on the table. People are being sacrificed and to add to their worries, there was a significant jump in the number of landlords selling up. There was a substantial increase in the number of notices to quit in the private rental sector in the past year. It increased by 47% between the first and second quarter of 2022, from 1,132 to 1,666. Tenants are in constant dread and fear of eviction where the landlords have significant power over their lives.

The RTB operates a register of private tenancies, as well as resolving disputes between landlords and tenants. This Bill is required due to the ongoing acute supply constraints in the residential rental sector and the increasing number of people presenting as homeless over the winter. I welcome the fact that the Government wants to reduce the burden on homelessness services and the pressure on tenants within the residential tenancy market. This temporary measure will protect renters who face homelessness by deferring any no-fault tenancy termination from taking place this winter until after 31 March 2023. Where people are in financial difficulties as a result of the cost-of-living and energy crises, they should be protected if they fall into arrears.

One young mother from my constituency contacted me because she is in fear of imminent eviction. She was recently given notice to vacate in the new year. Although she has been searching, she cannot locate an alternative property, with hundreds vying for the same properties in Louth. This extension is very welcome to her as she needs time to locate a new place to live for her and her family of four. Thankfully, most renters will be protected under the new moratorium, including students. However, it must be noted, rightly so, that it will still be possible to serve a notice of termination during the winter period and this protection will not extend to a tenant who chooses not to pay his or her rent or who is in breach of other tenancy obligations. This is fair and offers the landlord protection also.

While this emergency Bill is necessary and provides assistance in the short term, the long-term answers to the housing and accommodation challenges remain. The Government pitches the Housing for All plan as the proposal to alleviate the housing crisis. It promises an increasing supply of new housing, with an average of at least 30,000 new units per year. The promise of social and affordable homes for purchase or rent aims to eliminate homelessness and to address waiting lists, yet homelessness is at a record level, additional people are queuing down the street for a room, people are being priced out of buying a home and nearly half of people's wages are being paid in rent. The homelessness figure will continue to grow after the eviction ban has concluded unless the core problem of the lack of social and affordable homes is addressed.

Last week, the Union of Students in Ireland co-ordinated a students' walk-out in protest at the lack of accommodation for those attending further education. The Government must listen to these students. The market has failed to deliver accommodation for those renting and seeking to attend college, with many choosing to stay in hostels or to sleep in cars or even in tents rather than face a long commute each day. Because Louth is located along the commuter belt, my office has received numerous calls from students from across Ireland in search of accommodation. I will not say the Government has done nothing but it must do more.

The housing crisis is felt in every part of the country. In my constituency of Louth, we have a severe housing shortage and spiralling rents. The latest figures from daft.ieshow that the cost of renting in County Louth has risen by 8% in the past year. The average rent is now at €1,420. Letting agencies on the ground have painted a devastating picture of the current rental market with a shortage of supply that has hit all age groups and walks of life. In Dundalk and Drogheda, the rental crisis is catastrophic as thousands of people are vying for only a handful of homes. We must do whatever we can to keep families in their homes as a matter of urgency this winter. I fundamentally agree with the principle of a person having access to housing and, as such, I agree with the passing of this Bill.

The number of people being made homeless is unreal. Not a day passes without someone coming into my constituency office who is in that situation. It could be due to a husband and wife separating or someone in the home who has an addiction and their parents cannot put up with them any more. I commend the homelessness section in Louth County Council. We seem to have a hotline to it. We ring it nearly every day and, in fairness to them, its staff do their best. Many of the homeless people who come into my office have an addiction problem. The emergency accommodation is a good place to go but most of them refuse to go there because they maintain there are drugs available in them. This is something we must examine, given the amount of money the Government is spending on emergency accommodation. If there is a problem with drugs in them, then we will have to examine it seriously.

A young girl came to see me recently who has a problem with alcohol. She is only 18 years of age. Her parents threw her out. I rang the parents and they did not want to do anything with her. I contacted my local homeless centre and they told me the girl has a serious drink problem and she was in the Simon Community hostel but they threw her out because was drinking again. She came back to see me. Where does this young girl go from here? Nobody seems to want to know anything about this young girl - neither the HSE nor the mental health services. She is only 18 years of age. She slept for three nights on top of a new Halliday Mills apartment block on Quay Street in Dundalk. She slept at the top of the building because she felt safe there at night time. I keep ringing and asking how come this young girl is forced to sleep rough. The system does not work right. If we ring the psychiatric unit in Crosslanes in Drogheda, we are told a person must be referred by a doctor or consultant. If you go to the doctor, the doctor will give a few sleeping tablets. This young girl is caught in the middle. She feels as though nobody wants her. My main concern at the moment is what is going to happen to her. She keeps calling to the office and we keep ringing up on her behalf but I am afraid that some day this wee girl will not come in and she will be found dead. The system is failing drastically. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and the Minister for Health should be working together to help the likes of this young girl. I will contact Louth County Council tomorrow and let them know that I spoke to the Minister today. There is no way that society should be like that. I apologise as I did not realise I had used up so much time.

Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent)
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People's expectation to own their own home is now for many only a pipe dream. Why is that, if the economy was never stronger and employment levels are so high? NAMA is part of the answer. It was initially sold to the public as a system that would save the housing market by warehousing loans, but instead this changed midstream and those loans were sold to vulture funds, resulting in the utter collapse and devastation of the housing market in Ireland. Ruined developers were made bankrupt at every turn. The skilled workforce they employed left for greener pastures, never to return. Whatever the spin doctors say about developers, it was not the builders and developers that caused the housing collapse, but they are part of the solution, if they were only listened to by the politicians.

I uttered those words on the floor of the Dáil in March 2020, just after I was elected. Here is a little more of what I said at the time:

Change means looking at and introducing current macro-prudential rules, not applying rules of another era. Can we consider a mortgage interest rate cap? As we hear every day, banks are making excessive profits. Can we simply legislate to equate multiples of borrowing to the current interest rates, not ten year old interest rates?

Irish banks were flush with money and we had a regulator that could only be described as asleep at the wheel. Today, two and a half years since I uttered those words, we have a regulator who has woken up but it just a few years too late, as he decides to increase the multiples house buyers can borrow but with their ability to repay greatly reduced because of a cost-of-living crisis and at a time when interest rates are rising at speed. I return to my 2020 maiden speech:

The main people now facilitating the building of properties are the cuckoo funds which, as we know, pay no taxes but the optics are that we are building. We will never be able to break free of the rental limbo this Government has put us in nor will the affordability crisis ever be over unless we change how we do things. That means taking decisive action that works.

Today, optics and spin are not what it is about. It is about policies that work. It means strong leadership and standing up and being counted when faced with officials who will not listen, like a regulator insisting on the implementation of regulations and measures that reduce viability, such as dezoning lands, even serviced lands. It is just mind-boggling.

Let us not forget that for every new build, the Government takes a tax of 33%, yet rather than reducing VAT on new builds to zero, like our nearest neighbours in Northern Ireland, and encouraging building and affordability, it attacks people's property rights. An eviction ban is necessary only because of the disastrous attitude to housing of this Government and previous Governments. We should not forget that Ireland was the only country that closed its building sector during Covid. Instead of taking actions to encourage building, the Government has increased the cost of doing so with a block levy, that is, a lifelong levy for the innocent to pay, whereas those who were responsible or had been tasked with the oversight ride off into the sunset laughing at the fact they got away scot-free. The Government is making sure that housing is unaffordable for those most in need, first-time buyers, by introducing a levy. These are sticking plasters. There is not one big idea coming from the Government with regard to housing. Scheme after scheme is announced with no evidence they increase the supply. There are no meaningful actions. Where is the LDA or Croí Cónaithe? It is nonsense, all spin. There is no one in the county councils to carry out the inspections. All of them are afraid to make a decision.

On 6 July 2021, there was a debate in the House about a ban on rent increases. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, closed his remarks by stating:

There is no single, silver-bullet solution to rents. There are many solutions and a multifaceted approach is required. That is what the Government is doing. A realistic way of dealing with this would be to assess, over a 12-month period, how the measures we hope to pass tomorrow night, with the support of Deputies across all parties and none, are taking effect. We must have a proportionate response that is not going to impact on supply in the market.

I challenge any member of the Government to explain how the situation is better than it was in July 2021, when those comments were made, after all the interventions made by the Government. Is it that the Government now believes a ban on no-fault evictions is a silver bullet? It is time to admit that the Government and the housing Department are out of their depth. They are out of ideas and now they are out of housing.

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak to the Bill. I will preface my remarks by declaring my interest in that I am a landlord and I have some properties we have rented. If we keep demonising landlords who are renting out properties in the way we are doing, we will find we will be in bigger trouble than we are right now. I understand there are about 500 properties in Galway that are up for sale where notice has been given and the tenants are local authority tenants. There is something wrong when that is happening, and it is not greed or anything like that.

People forget that many landlords are accidental landlords. I know of someone who bought a home but had to relocate for their job. They rented out their house to be able to pay their mortgage while they were renting somewhere else. They will not be coming back to the house now because they have moved permanently to another location. They are trying to sell the first house in order that they can buy a house in their new location but they cannot get the tenant out of the house, having been trying for two and a half years. There are two sides to every story and I am not saying every tenant is wrong.

The HAP scheme, as it stands, is totally alienating landlords. If a landlord has a rogue tenant who refuses to pay his or her portion of HAP to the local authority, the HAP office will not pay any rent to the landlord, leaving the landlord without his or her rent and leaving the tenant with a free house that costs the State nothing. Going through the process of notification, validation and all that goes with that can take a couple of years. There has to be a reality check in what we are doing.

Why are we bringing in legislation to ban evictions over this winter? It is a reflection of where we are with our housing. Policies are failing. The Croí Cónaithe scheme is proving to be a major struggle for local authorities. I have been dealing with a constituent who has been waiting since August to have an inspection carried out. He could not wait any longer to get the builder in or he would miss the opportunity to do up a house to live in. He is one half of a young couple.

That is a disservice and it is not the local authorities' fault. They were handed this scheme as a panacea to help bring vacant properties back into use. It was a very good idea, except that nobody asked how we would help the local authorities to manage the scheme on top of all the other schemes we are foisting on them. Next week, or whenever the Minister issues his directive following his announcement at the ploughing championships that he was going to extend the Croí Cónaithe scheme to rural areas, how are the local authorities going to deal with that? How are they going to carry out the inspections? They will not be able to do it. We will have created an expectation, with applications going in, but there will be nobody at the other end of the phone to say when an inspection will be carried out. There will be nobody to say whether the application is right or wrong. We will just have another bunged-up system. If we are real about doing things and putting things right, we have to put money in place to run the scheme and resource the local authorities, if they are what we are going to get to do it.

The Minister of State knows about the next issue because he was notified about it. A housing scheme in my constituency has been boarded up, despite being almost complete, because there is a technical planning issue, which has now gone to An Bord Pleanála for a judicial review Most of the houses were going to the local authority and the local authority itself deemed that the application was invalid. It beggars belief what is going on. I have been dealing with another housing scheme, which the Minister has visited, and it is almost complete. It is a great scheme with beautiful, well-built houses but it is waiting for Irish Water to connect it. That is another fiasco. Developers cannot install the connections themselves. They have to get the contractor that has been nominated by Irish Water, and that is driving the price through the roof.

I had a case of a person who was building their own house and had to bring water 150 m along a public road. This person could not do it; Irish Water had to do it. The cost for doing it was €60,000 for a single house. Let us get real. What is going on is madness and nobody is calling it out for what it is.

Every gateway of approval is being put in place for procurement for local authorities trying to deliver housing schemes. There are maybe seven or eight gateways of approvals. Why not trust the local authorities to deliver the housing the Government wants to deliver and that is so badly needed? Why does it not devolve the money to the local authorities and ask them to deliver it? Every time they look for approval, it takes three to six months. These approvals create layer upon layer of bureaucracy, as well as jobs and costs that are not really necessary. We have to get real about this.

At one time, we had an agency called the National Building Agency, which we got rid of. It was able to build houses and work with the local authorities. It was able to get things done. It had the expertise to do it. We do not have that expertise within the Department or in the local authorities because we got rid of it all. We said we do not need to build any social housing. We need to get something going in terms of a crack unit that will tackle this problem head on, cut out all this trash in the middle and free up the system so we can actually build houses.

There is talk about rapid building and how we build our houses. I can tell the Minister of State now from my own experience that the easiest thing to do in this world is build a house. If we get a contractor on site, we will get a product at the end of it. It is the gap in between deciding to build something and getting to the stage of having a contractor, however, that will take four, five or six years of procurement, reports and whatever else. Let us get real.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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Like everyone else here, I know of a number of people whose tenancies have recently been terminated through no fault of their own. They are facing into a winter of uncertainty. Of course, I welcome any attempt to keep families in their homes and provide them with security. For families who feared losing their tenancy or perhaps felt a notice to quit was imminent, this will buy them time and eliminate the worry of eviction in the coming months. It also buys the sector time to increase delivery of new homes; something to which we are absolutely committed.

I have raised my concerns previously in this Chamber that a rent freeze and eviction ban could lead to a similar situation to that experienced in Berlin, where things got worse for tenants after measures were introduced because the supply of rental properties dried up and landlords left the market. We have a very constrained market here in Ireland. We must guard against those potential unintended consequences at all costs. We need to give tenants certainly and security. That is the absolute bottom line. We will not achieve that long-term security for tenants without bringing landlords along with us, however. That is why I would personally favour also introducing measures that support landlords and keep them in the market because that is how we keep tenants in their homes.

Housing for All is aimed at addressing Ireland's overall housing supply challenge but we know the private renal market has now become an acute crisis. Small-scale landlords are exiting the market. At the same time, there is a need for an additional 6,500 rental properties annually, according to the housing needs and demand assessment. Owners of one or two rental properties represent 86% of registered tenancies. Preliminary data from the RTB survey of landlords show that taxation is a major factor for exiting the sector. Notwithstanding the various protections for tenants, it is clear that extra steps are required to stem the exit of landlords from the private market and most importantly, to support renters who are paying high rents that are often more than a mortgage would cost.

Tax is the one area in which a quick market response can be encouraged. I am not talking about institutional landlords. I am talking about the 86% of landlords who have one or two properties. I am talking about the mom and pop landlords and accidental landlords. I am talking about helping to keep them and their properties in the rental market. How can we do this? We need to give them fair tax treatment. It is my belief that tenants should get a dividend from any tax reduction landlords receive. There are two goals here. First, we need to keep landlords in the market so tenants have a place to rent. Second, and most crucially, we need to reduce rents for renters. I welcome the tax credit for renters that will give couples back €2,000 in tax in the next few months. I am glad that is now being extended to parents who pay rent for their children if, for example, the children are students. I believe we need to do more for renters but we also need to do more for landlords.

We should look at capital gains tax and at providing some form of relief on property sold, acquired and retained as rental accommodation, including an appropriate clawback for a five-year period. This would give flexibility and incentive for landlords to enter and stay in the market to deliver homes for people. It needs to pay to be a landlord and it needs to cost less to rent. Landlords need to stay in the market and tenants desperately need security. While I welcome this Bill, we need to be even more innovative.

On the topic of banning evictions, I want to mention those who are overholding because they have nowhere to go. I ask the Minister of State to look at their particular circumstances too.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I echo the comments of Deputy Higgins. To expand on that, I am of the view that while the tax treatment of a small landlords, the very large proportion of whom own one or two properties, is fair, in a progressive taxation system any additional income they make from it should be taxed appropriately. The unfortunate reality, however, is that they are leaving the market in droves. That is causing evictions to take place, which is putting good people out on the street in the midst of a housing crisis. The reality is that we must do something. We can support tenants but we can also support one-off small-time landlords, if you want to call them that, to stay in the market because they are the ones who are exiting the market. Even my colleagues on the benches opposite would agree that something must be done to increase the supply of rental properties. If we do not do anything, it is evident that more people will leave the market.

This Bill is to be welcomed. I also welcomed the eviction ban in the midst of Covid-19. We are in a crisis of a different type but it is a crisis, nonetheless. This Bill offers the breathing space for tenants up and down the country to ensure their tenancies can be maintained throughout a difficult period. I would say, however, that perhaps a matter that should be discussed at the housing committee, on which I am very much aware Deputy Higgins serves, is the length of the ban. It should be discussed by all parties and by the Minister because I do not think we are going to be getting out of the rental market crisis in March or April of next year. I believe it will go on for some time and on that basis, further consideration should be given to ensure those who are in vulnerable tendencies are supported.

Housing for All, of course, sets a path for 300,000 new homes between now and the end of 2030, including more than 90,000 social homes, 36,000 affordable homes and most importantly, in the context of a discussion on rental, 18,000 cost-rental properties. That is something to which we must aspire. However, I would be wary of the impacts Covid-19 and, of course, the war in Ukraine have had on construction costs and any potential slow-down that might arise from that. I was pleased to note the Minister of State saying that social housing supply will show progress in quarter 4 of this year. I certainly hope that can be sustained. A point I wish to reiterate in the last few moments of my contribution is that we should keep a close eye on commencements across the State and be prepared to act swiftly to support the construction sector should commencements start to decline. That would be a very worrisome trend in the housing market, should it arise in 2023.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Many struggled through the pandemic dealing with illness, loss, isolation and grief but for others, it was a lifeline. For the first time in years, we saw the numbers of homelessness actually decline. How bad does housing policy have to be that a pandemic improves a person's situation?

That was the case for many individuals and families. The Government lifted the Covid eviction ban last April and everyone knew what would happen, that we would again have a situation where homelessness would rise month on month, back to where we were pre pandemic. The housing crisis continues to deepen, with rents in my own county of Mayo up 90% from the lowest point. According to the latest daft.ie report, they increased 16% in the last year alone, yet we do not have any designated rent pressure zones. It is almost impossible to keep up with the number of people contacting my office and I am sure other people's offices just seeking help to find a roof over their heads. It is a really desperate situation. I have never seen the like before in all of my time as a public representative. The eviction ban is not a silver bullet but it will mean the world to families currently fearing being evicted into homelessness.

The measures still require people to respect the property and continue paying their rent, obviously. We need to keep this in proportion when we are talking about the impact it will have on landlords. I talked to a woman in Castlebar last week who is a landlord and who has one house. She told me that in all conscience she could not raise the rent because she knew her tenant could not afford it. There are many responsible landlords but there are others who are exploiting the situation out of base. I know of professional carers who work full-time and share a room with five other people, particularly in cities. English-language students are often packed into overcrowded conditions by unscrupulous landlords. I fear that a minority of landlords who never cared about the overcrowding situation might now use the loophole to evict renters. While overcrowding is a serious issue, the Government's sudden concerns about people living in these conditions ring hollow. There is a window of opportunity with this necessary intervention, but it is just a window. If the whole situation is not escalated in terms of increasing the supply side, we will again have another cliff edge come March. That has to be fixed. We also have to lift the income thresholds. They are a nonsense. That report is on the Minister's desk. It needs to be published. We have this opportunity. It will be an absolute failure upon the failure that is already there if this period is not taken to make these interventions count for people in order that they have something as basic as shelter come March and April of next year.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I am a bit perplexed about this legislation. I tried to grapple with it. My staff in the office, especially Kathy, my daughter, Councillor Máirín McGrath, and all the girls who are there are dealing with terrible situations on a daily basis. They are just flocking in with nowhere to go,with letters giving notice to quit, you name it. Successive Governments have failed to grapple with this. Regulation is never the best way. For a business with an employer and employees, they are better off if they can have good will and a two-way street. About 86% of landlords are ordinary small landlords. The vast majority of them are decent people. They are not in it for a quick buck or for gain. Some of them inherited a house or bought a house as a kind of pension plan. They do their best. Then we have the tiny minority of terrible bad tenants as well. There would need to be room. We had one of them in my own county recently, in my own town of Clonmel, and the house was nearly demolished on a daily basis. It took two years. I could not understand how any human beings would do such damage to a house. They came in and sat in front of me after being through the courts and after being evicted. They were in the hostel and thankfully they have been rehoused now. They need to be rehabilitated. If people are not able to mind a house and look after it, or do not want to, and damage it and dig up the cables, the oil pipes and God knows what, and try to blame the landlord - it was a horrible case. There are many cases like that. Eventually, the court and all found in favour so they had to be. This was turned into a head of steam by people, groups trying to have a protest at this family being evicted. However, we must understand the situations landlords find themselves in. They are not business people, many of them, they are ordinary decent people, no fuss. As Deputy Conway-Walsh said, they have good relationships with their tenants and do not want to put up the rent. Properties are being damaged and other things like that.

The Minister of State announced Croí Cónaithe at the ploughing championships. He was out ploughing, and he would better off if he had stayed ploughing. Ministers love announcing these schemes. They have no consultation with the county councils - none, zilch. Now there is a grand scheme going to create so many places. So many people were delighted because they have buildings they want to upgrade and do up that may be semi-derelict and so on. They were waiting a long time for it but now they are waiting since the ploughing championships, well over a month ago. The Government is great at announcing these schemes. There is no follow-up or follow-through, no knock-on down to the county councils. Then there are voids that are out there and not being brought back.

We are talking about tenancies. I am perplexed, as I said, as to whether this legislation is a good or a bad thing. I would prefer that there could be amicable relations between the tenant and the renter. I hate calling them landlords because they are not, they are accidental landlords or they acquired the property, as I said earlier. We need to be understanding here. The blunt force of legislation - this is going to come to a crescendo again in a couple of months' time. What are we going to do? Is it going to go on and be extended for another three months? There lies the real problem. We need to be encouraging and have more educational programmes for landlords and tenants. We need to have more understanding. It would be an awful thing to be evicted but if people go through a court process and everything is found against them, the renter has to have rights as well. There has to be respect for his property. It is a two-way street.

I agree also that some students are exploited, with different foreign-language people coming in here. What kind of a sense is that going to give them of us as a nation of a thousand welcomes, céad míle fáilte go hÉireann? There are bad messages going back. There is a lot of obair stairiúil to be done here. The Government just does not seem to be grappling with it. Announcing schemes one after the other in succession and not dealing with it is not the answer.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I am glad to get the opportunity to talk on this very serious matter. I, too, am looking at this from both sides. I really feel for the people who have to give up their tenancy or whatever or when they get notice to quit, mothers with maybe three children, couples and young children. So many times there is a human side to their story. It is sad that we are not improving and have not improved the situation. For the number of years I have been up here now, the situation has not improved. In fact, it is getting way worse. It is sad for the people who have nowhere to go. This eviction ban that the Government is putting in place now until the end of March will do nothing to encourage landlords or householders to stay in the private renting business. It is one of the reasons that they will get out of it and sell their houses or do something else. If we want control, and I believe that someone who buys or pays for a house - first of all I should have declared that my brother is an owner of some houses, I do not know how many, I will not ask him. I have only my own house anyway. It is so tough on people. I know someone who has their house sold for a number of months, and they have notice given to someone to quit for over two years. It is a well-heeled professional man and he will not get out of the house. That is not encouraging other house-owners or landlords to stay in the renting business.

Our homeless centres are not adequate, where couples with children are directed into a homeless centre where there are other people with addiction, noise and everything and small quarters. I say to the Minister of State and I really mean it that the Government had no problem in the world in directing and finding a hotel in the Park Road in Killarney for 193 asylum seekers, and it is putting more of them into Ballybunion.

I am asking the Government to find proper rental accommodation for our own people who become homeless and to look after them in the same way it looks after the hundreds of thousands who come here from other countries. We have enough of them at this time and we need to cap that story and give it up until the Government is able to look after them. It is not doing that and it is leaving our own behind.

There are 171 vacant houses in Kerry. I am directly blaming the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, for this because he is demanding that those houses be deep retrofitted, which will cost €60,000 or €70,000 in each case. However, the Department is giving only €11,000 towards that. If homeowners got a grant in the past six years, they will not get a euro or a penny to bring their houses back into use. Heretofore, the council was able to rely on the tenant purchase scheme to bring voids back into use but that scheme is no longer working. The ban on Airbnb letting and other short-term letting is not going to help people to rent long term.

Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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As always, I begin by declaring an interest in this topic. However, I speak on behalf of the people I represent in making a number of observations on the matter. First, the introduction of a ban on evictions will not increase the availability of housing, public or private, in any shape or fashion whatsoever. For the people in County Kerry who are on the waiting list, it will not improve their lot one inch. I want to see real and meaningful work by the Government that will make housing available to people. The one thing this proposal certainly is doing is causing a very negative effect on any person who is involved in private letting. We should remember these people pay 56% tax on rental income. The biggest beneficiary of rental income in Ireland today is the Government. It collects the 56% tax from those people. It is important to make that clear. For every €1,000 of rent received, the Government gets €560 of that money. I am putting that on the record of the Dáil.

I was contacted by a person from the Taoiseach's constituency who voted for him in the past but does not intend to do so in the future. This person has come together with 70 other property owners in the Taoiseach's constituency who are pulling out of the business of providing accommodation on the private market. They have spoken to a family member of the Taoiseach and they have contacted his office. They have failed to make contact with him, despite many of them having voted for him. They cannot get to talk to him. They asked me to put the matter on the record of the Dáil to remind the Taoiseach that he is ignoring 70 people in his constituency who are getting out of the private property market because of what they see as the negative attitude of the Government and the lack of assistance to them in providing accommodation. The State has abjectly failed in its role of providing accommodation. There is a need for private accommodation.

I also want to give the human side of what the lack of housing means for people. Only in the past couple of hours, I got a telephone call from a very nice girl whose name and location I will not give. She is a mom of three children who was living in private rented accommodation. That accommodation is no longer available to her for a number of reasons. She had no alternative but to move back in with her mom and dad, who live in a three-bedroom house with two sisters and two brothers of the girl who called me, as well as a niece. Now the girl and her three children are also living there, which makes a total of 11 people in this small and ordinary three-bedroom house. I listened to the girl and gave a lot of care and thoughtful consideration to her plight. When I was coming through the door of the Chamber this evening, all I was thinking of was that girl and her story. She reached out to me asking whether there is some hope for her. She is not on the local authority housing list for a long enough period of time to be in line for a home. As we know, eight, nine, ten, 11 or 12 years is the minimum time people must be on the list to get a house. She will be waiting an awfully long time to get one and in the meantime she is living in that cramped and crowded accommodation.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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I am not a landlord but I know a lot of landlords and a lot of tenants. Many of both are fantastic but there is a minority of bad landlords and a minority of bad tenants. Many of the bad landlords care about nothing other than increasing rents on their properties. Some of those properties are not even liveable but their owners continue to squeeze people because they know they have nowhere else to go. The average rent across the country is now €1,500 a month, with variations on that figure throughout the State.

The provision in the Bill that a tenant who engages in antisocial or criminal behaviour will not be exempt from termination of their lease is only fair, both for people living in rental accommodation and for those living next door to rental accommodation. This is a two-way street and we must make sure people in rental accommodation appreciate where they are and that both renters and landlords work together with their neighbours in the locality. As I said, there are fantastic people renting and fantastic landlords.

I have been talking to local business owners who are struggling to get employees. They say that if they had to, they would build accommodation for staff. One of the people I spoke to, who has been in business since 1977, expressed the same willingness to put up accommodation for staff but said the planning laws will not allow it. Under those laws, he can build accommodation for his staff but he would have to give X amount back for social housing. For the future-proofing of these businesses, it does not make sense for the owners to build properties for their staff and then have to build social and affordable housing or make a payment in place of doing so. The Government needs to look at that situation. It could help people to get a job and have a roof over their heads. Some of the people these business owners want to build properties for have been in their employment for the past 15 or 20 years and are currently in rental accommodation they can no longer afford. This is putting pressure on the employers, who must raise wages to hold on to their staff. That cost will be passed to the person who is buying the product over the counter. This creates inflation, which means the cost comes back to the Exchequer in the end. This is an issue the Minister of State must look at if we are to ensure people in this country can be housed. Businesses should be able to provide housing for employees if it benefits the business to do so.

Elsewhere in Europe, 50% of people live in apartments. In Ireland, that figure is 10%. It does not make sense. The reason for the lack of accommodation provision in this State is the failure of this Government and previous Governments to put infrastructure in place around the country. That lack of infrastructure is causing a lot of our problems.

Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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As several colleagues mentioned, it is important to look at this issue from both sides. We cannot talk about housing without talking about the plight of some landlords. They are not all unscrupulous. In fact, many of them are being very fair. In looking at the housing crisis, we must reverse back to where the mistakes were made and the fact is there were a shocking number of mistakes. There are issues with what was done with planning permissions, with rooms in towns and villages and the doing away with village nucleuses. The roots of all these problems are found in the county development plans. Some of the local authorities, including my own, had a lot of polished but clueless craturs who were drawing up these plans without looking to the future. They made sure planning permissions and opportunities would not be given to young people in rural communities.

We are now planning to build houses and apartments all over the blooming place, trying to catch up many years later. All this negativity was built into country development plans. Areas where village nucleuses were taken from them and areas that were previously designated for development are being cut back. Where are we going? Every time we come up here we are told there is no control over planning here; it is just a case of building as high and as long and as far as we can take it. However, in rural areas there are severe restrictions. Unfortunately, that has led to people feeling they have no choice but to give up. They could not get the banks to back them and could not get planning permission, so it was basically back to social housing for them. Now, there is a real crisis in social housing. I presume it is the same for every other Deputy. There are people coming into my clinics every weekend with letters from their landlords saying they are being evicted. There is a freeze on that at the moment with the eviction ban, but that will not last long.

I also want to look at the other side of the coin in the little time I have, and talk about the situation of landlords. I was talking to a landlord recently who had a tenant who was not willing to pay the rent. The landlord asked me to raise the issue in the Dáil because he felt that perhaps we are hearing only one side of the story all the time. The tenant would not pay the rent, and significant work and cost was involved in getting the individual out of the house in west Cork, with the sheriff and all the other expense and time involved. In the meantime, the tenant was only teasing and laughing at the landlord. The landlord may have succeeded in evicting the tenant, but it cost him a hell of a lot of money. Some landlords can get a bad name. I met a person the other day who told me they were renting their house in Bantry for €800 a month, which is way below the normal rate. The landlord said they had a very nice tenant and they did not want to put hardship on them. There are a lot of decent people out there who are letting houses and are trying to keep good people in their homes, and who do not charge as high a rent as others. Obviously, there are also rogue landlords.

I am very conscious of young people who do not qualify for HAP and are disqualified over small sums of money and cannot qualify for social housing. That is a huge hardship for them. They are falling between two stools, and this needs to be looked at. The cap needs to be raised. It may be that a couple are working and are not on a high income, but still cannot qualify to get on the housing list. This is a very important issue. Other speakers talked about the new funding scheme that was announced at the ploughing championships, which provides for a grant of up to €50,000. That needs to be worked on immediately. We were talking about ruins in the countryside and in villages 15 to 20 years ago and nobody was listening. Now everybody is running around and trying to listen. Unfortunately, the horse has bolted and the Government is standing at the station when it comes to the issue of housing. The way things are going, it will not get any better; it will get much worse.

Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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I have a fundamental problem with this Bill, because the purpose of it is to transfer responsibility for a series of failures of government over decades onto the private sector and, in particular, onto a small group in the private sector who are less well equipped to bear the burden of that than another group in the private sector. Before I was elected to this Dáil, I worked as an adjudicator in the Private Residential Tenancies Board, PRTB. In that time, I was shocked by the standard of tenancies in which people were expected to live in the Clare area. I was shocked by the complete inaction of the State apparatus to do anything about that. There was a complete lack of engagement by local authorities. The responsibility to inspect was given to local authorities, rather than to the PRTB, and local authorities were simply not carrying out those inspections, which was essentially enabling rogue landlords to get away with letting houses in appalling conditions. I am aware that the Housing for All strategy has set a target of 25% of all tenancies to be inspected, and there was quite a big jump in the number of inspections in 2019. It fell off in 2020 and 2021 during Covid. I note, from the Minister of State's latest response to a parliamentary question, it was up again substantially in the first quarter of 2022. I hope that continues, because it is vitally important that landlords know their tenancy will be inspected and it has to meet a certain minimum standard. Otherwise, we are essentially allowing a free-for-all in a market where there is complete inequality between the tenant and the landlord.

The other thing I was shocked at was the complete powerlessness of landlords to evict a rogue tenant. I am not referring to a tenant who perhaps could not afford to pay, which would be very unfortunate for a landlord if it meant he or she would fall behind. Not every landlord buys as an investment, and certainly not every landlord is a huge investment trust. I will come to a particular example soon. There are lots of people who are accidental landlords, who ended up being a landlord because they bought a house, could not afford to sell it because it was in negative equity for a number of years, and had to move to another part of the country. Often such landlords become tenants themselves, and become landlords of their own homes. If people stopped paying rent, even if it was because they could not pay it, it still left the landlord in arrears. The length of time it took to get action from the PRTB was simply appalling at the time. There were other cases of the willful destruction of the tenancy by the tenant, and again, the landlord was completely hamstrung. There is no right to peaceable re-entry as there is in a commercial tenancy. Many people in this House called for private tenancies to be treated like commercial tenancies in terms of tenancies being able to continue beyond the sale and properties being sold subject to a tenancy, but obviously nobody is calling for the right to peaceable re-entry, because it is somebody's home. Therefore, there has to be a certain fairness in the legal framework that is applied. I am talking about small individual landlords. I have seen photographic evidence of the most appalling destruction of what was once a landlord's family home that they ended up having to let out, and having to wait months - years, in some instances - to be able to get the tenant out lawfully by relying on the State. That, as much as the failure to carry out inspections, is a failure of the State.

During the summer, I had the luxury of being on holiday at one point. I got a phone call from a constituent, who I will call Seán, for the purposes of this contribution. I know his family well. He and his wife left Ireland to go to another country with their child. They had planned to return to Ireland, having made some money like a lot of young couples. His wife became ill and due to the deficiencies of our health system, which are particularly pronounced in the midwest, they decided to stay in the country they were in for treatment. She subsequently passed away from cancer. It was their joint wish, before she passed away, that he would bring up the child up in the family home in Ireland. Seán contacted the tenant that was in the family home and asked him to leave. The tenant said, "Oh yeah". When he got back to Ireland he reminded the tenant that he would like him to leave at that time, and the tenant responded and said that he had not been served with a notice to quit. Seán then served the tenant with a 120-day notice to terminate the tenancy. On the 120th day, the tenant said he had received the notice and knew what Seán meant, but the notice was deficient because a couple of words were missing from it, so he was not moving anywhere. The process started all over again. Now, the Government is telling Seán that he and his child cannot go into their home.

I appreciate that hard cases make bad law but we must acknowledge that not all landlords are unscrupulous profit-loving corporations that are investing. If we continue down the road we are on, those are the only people who will be landlords. I would not like to be a tenant with a dodgy landlord but I certainly would not want to be a landlord in Ireland either. The only people who will want to be landlords are these large corporations because they are the only ones with deep enough pockets. My constituent is living in what is now overcrowded accommodation with other family members and his infant son, having returned to Ireland. He is bemoaning the fact he brought his son, who is a citizen of Ireland, back to this county. As far as he is concerned, he has been utterly let down by the State. As much as his tenant might feel let down by the State because there is no rental accommodation available, that is not a failure of my constituent or people like him, yet they are the ones who are going to bear the brunt of it.

This Government and previous governments failed to invest adequately in the Residential Tenancies Board to ensure it was fit for purpose. They failed to ensure there were enough inspections to disincentivise rogue landlords. Most fundamentally, they failed to invest in housing and build houses. Notwithstanding that momentous failure of governments over decades, it is now being made the problem of my constituent. His tenant's problem is his problem. His own child's problem is also his problem. Is that fair? It is not disproportionate for a landlord to tell tenants they can still be evicted if they cannot pay rent, which is the fundamental problem. If it is okay to evict somebody because they cannot pay rent, why can my constituent, or somebody like him, not tell his tenants that while he has the utmost sympathy for them, he needs the house as much as they do? Why can he not tell his tenants that while he appreciates it is their home, it is also his home because he bought it and is paying the mortgage, and wants to bring up his son in the house, as his wife wanted? If the Minister is going to exclude people who cannot pay rent, and that is considered proportionate, then I say it is utterly disproportionate not to allow somebody to serve a notice to quit so they can re-enter their home. I am introducing an amendment to that effect, which the Minister of State might be minded to accept. It is something that will not affect the large corporations because they are not going to want to enter a home. It is only individuals who will want to enter a home for their own purposes or those of a family member. I urge the Minister of State to think about that. As far as I can see, all this Bill is doing is to transfer responsibility for a problem to which this Government and previous governments have contributed on to the private sector. That seems utterly disproportionate.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak. It is the second time today I have spoken about housing, which is unusual. Part of me does not want to repeat the same thing. However, it is extremely important that we continue to counter the narrative from the Government.

I welcome the Bill and the effort that has gone into it. This should have happened sooner. We know that the moratorium on evictions during the pandemic had a positive impact. There was a dramatic decrease in evictions. After it was lifted, of course, evictions rose sharply. Since then, the housing crisis has worsened and deepened. Notwithstanding the narrative from the Government, we now know that there were 10,805 people homeless in August, 3,220 of whom were children. It is important to say those figures slowly and out loud because their homelessness is a direct consequence of Government policy.

Imagine, we are here today and the Government has the help of all the Opposition. Pre-legislative scrutiny was waived. No analysis has been done by the Library and Research Service, which I thank for the Bill briefing it produced under pressure. All of that effort has been made to help the Government to bring in legislation to stop evictions for a certain length of time, to defer them, and introduce them on a phased basis so that the homeless services will not be overwhelmed. That is what we have come to in this country. That in itself is worthy of a little silence and reflection. We have come to a point in our lives where we have to bring in legislation for phased evictions. They will be deferred and then brought in on a phased basis so that the homeless services will not be overwhelmed. We know officially that 10,805 people are homeless. I like to be precise with figures because they represent mothers, fathers and children.

A wise Government or politician would ask what they are doing and what is happening because things are worsening, despite the narrative. In Galway city, there is not a single home available under any housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme, whether the regular scheme or the scheme under which discretion is allowed. We know that from the Simon Community, and I read that out this morning. There is nothing available. We have a housing task force that has been sitting every now and again. I understand we are waiting for the minutes of a meeting in February, in a situation when Galway is at crisis point. I checked today. One person has been on a waiting list since 2007 and has never been offered a home. This is the tenth year of her wait. There is no need to exaggerate because the figures are stark.

The CEO of Galway City Council made a two-page presentation to the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage last week. I always look for brevity because I think it adds to an argument. However, in this particular case, brevity from the CEO meant a two-page presentation dedicated to a city that is going under because of the housing crisis. One thing that jumps out at me from that presentation is where the CEO stated, "Essential to the delivery of our targets are the private sector in their role in delivery of social and affordable housing through Part V and turnkey schemes." The document includes a list, which I welcome, and the numbers of builds involved are minute. We are utterly reliant on the market, according to the CEO of Galway City Council, even though the Taoiseach tells us the State is the biggest agent in the sector at the moment. The CEO tells us we are reliant on the market in Galway city.

I have mentioned the task force, and I mentioned the Land Development Agency, LDA, this morning. I will come back to that point. We have pockets of land in Galway. We have no city architect. We have run down the planning department. I am not here to demonise any planning department because its staff work extremely hard. We have absolutely run them down and run them ragged. We have made them involved in the strategic housing schemes, which means extra work for which they got no recompense, psychologically or financially, to help An Bord Pleanála. We have done away with them now, again on a phased basis. We have no personnel within the city council and no policy to directly build public housing on public land. We can use the LDA, or any agency we like, but we must allow the local authority to lead, with vision from the Government. We need public housing on public land.

We must deal with our waiting lists. We must look to remove the silly situation, and "silly" does not capture it, in respect of income limits. In my office and with my staff, as is the case for all Deputies, one cannot imagine what we are doing. We are trying to get people back on lists from which they were removed because their income went up a little bit, either as a result of extra payments or extra work for a period of time. We write letters. It is like a lucky dip. Sometime we are lucky and get those people back on those lists. That makes us rejoice. Those people bring me gifts, which I do not need, such is their gratitude. All us Deputies are doing those things instead of looking at the bigger problem. Very often, when such people are put back on the lists, they have lost two years. People may have been on the list since 2007 before losing time between 2019 and 2021 and thereafter being reinstated. We are delighted by such a result. That is what we have been reduced to. We are utterly failing, and I include myself in that. Despite my best efforts, and those of the Opposition more widely, we have utterly failed to get the message across. We are not ideologues on this side of the House. It is about what is practical and common sense. We must have homes for people and security of tenure. That can be achieved in a myriad of ways, but mostly through the provision of public housing on public land. We must balance the market and let it provide. We have done the opposite. We have removed local authorities and the Government from the equation through the introduction of HAP.

Do the Members remember that? I did not have time to quote it this morning and I do not have it with me but somebody in the Department absolutely rejoiced at the wonder that was HAP. It is quoted there in my papers. This person was taking a delight in the progress that was made with HAP, which was a complete privatisation of the housing service. We then bring in all of the other little schemes which ensure we keep the prices so high, we think it is normal when the Central Bank changes its rules to make it more flexible for somebody to buy a house and get a mortgage of four times their salary. What kind of a civilised society thinks that is civilised? These are more flexible rules. The inflexibility of the Central Bank, going back in time, was the justification for the help to buy scheme. I have read into the record what Mazars, in its fourth report analysing this, said and it is utterly terrible. I am paraphrasing but it asked not to get rid of the scheme now because it would be too much of a jolt to the market and to the expectations that we will continue to help people to buy houses costing up to €500,000. This is four times more the cost of the scheme than had ever been envisaged by the Department of Finance. The Government wants us to have faith in it in this respect.

I certainly welcome this legislation although I am at a loss to know the cut-off point. I understand it from a legal point of view but what does one do with all of the people who have received notices to quit and are overholding before this legislation? Do we just look on them as deadweight, or what is the rationale for that? I ask that the Minister of State might try to explain that to me, please, because I will go a long way with him in understanding legislation. What is this cut-off point and what about those people who are already overholding? What will happen to them? There is no emergency accommodation available in Galway city, as I understand it. There are very few houses for rent. The houses there do not come under any of the schemes we have, yet we are persisting with that and putting money into the market.

I know we cannot a rid of these schemes overnight but I certainly do not agree with Mazars that it will take another two years to get rid of the help to buy scheme. We need a fundamental recognition that we allowed this to happen, government after government, based upon Government policy which said the market would provide. This is a market that is driven by greed and profit, and off with them. I am not here to judge them on a moral basis. I am here, however, as somebody in the Legislature who says there is a different way and it needs to be regulated and controlled.

I will finish again by talking about Galway. We have a port in Galway which owns land which is doing its own thing. We have Ceannt Station with 14 acres of land in the middle of the city doing its own thing. We have Sandy Road with more land, and Headford, and we are being told repeatedly by the narrative that these are all marvellous plans and we have drawn in, I believe, nine or ten architects in respect of Sandy Road to give us their vision. We know the vision and it is public housing on public land, indistinguishable from other houses. Stop this hypocrisy and division and let people who want to rent for life rent for life. Allow those who want to buy to get a mortgage but not at four times their salary. I welcome the legislation in the limited way I have outlined.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome this legislation and we will be supporting it insofar as it goes, in that it is very much an emergency stopgap legislation to deal with the crisis that has evolved. The crisis in a rental sector reaches to every part of the country. My colleague from Galway mentioned a city area. In rural areas everywhere, this problem exists where people who are in accommodation, many of them for many years, are faced with very significant increases in rent. A woman was in my office last week who is working three days a week in a supermarket, has two small children and is on her own, and her rent went up six months ago from €500 a month to €850 a month. The landlord refuses to take HAP. HAP is very much a measure to try to help people but many landlords refuse to take it because the market is such that they can choose outside of it. There is nothing she can do about it because she cannot find anywhere else and she is pleading to find a local authority house where she will have stability so that cannot happen to her.

I have another instance where a woman in a rural area in County Leitrim contacted us again in recent weeks where she and her husband are in a house and were paying approximately €600 a month. Their landlord has now put their rent up to more than €900 a month. Again, there is nothing she can do about it because there is nowhere else to go. That is the case for many people throughout the country.

We saw the situation in Sligo earlier this year where a landlord had nine or ten houses in a whole housing estate and increased the rent by over 150% in some cases. He put it up through the roof because he wanted to push the people to get out of there because he wanted to put others in. This area is not one of the zones we have set out, so simply nothing could be done. I raised this issue in the Chamber with the Minister and with the Taoiseach but nothing can be done. This is the problem we have where so many people are in this vulnerable position.

I also want to acknowledge, as previous speakers have talked about landlords, that many landlords are also in a difficult position. Not all landlords are bad people. Most of them are decent people who want to do their best. There are some out there, however, who see the opportunity to make a killing on this and that is a problem that has to be dealt with. This particular Bill, insofar as it goes, is about giving people a little bit of breathing space. That breathing space has to be used by Government, however, to ensure we put more accommodation in place for people and we find a way to provide more housing for more people to give them some stability and sense that they have a future. There are so many people now who are very much in dire straits. I know they are in the Minister of State’s and in every constituency, and every Deputy is dealing with this every day of the week. It is not just people from poorer families or from what used to be termed the working class or the council housing estates, but it is from everywhere and affecting everyone now.

I have had people on to me who are qualified with very good jobs but who simply cannot get anywhere to rent. Three girls contacted me who are schoolteachers living in Dublin, and all three are living in the same house. The rent has gone through the roof to the stage that they want to move back out to a rural area where they could find some cheaper rent. That is the case for so many people. The crisis we have in housing is particularly acute in the rental sector, and while this legislation will do something about putting a ban on evictions for a short time, the real answer is to ensure we provide adequate housing for our people.

Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputies for their contributions and the points they have raised, all of which will be taken note of and I will do my best to respond to all concerns. I am sure the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, will fully debate these matters with the Members later this evening on Committee Stage of the Bill. I have listened to colleagues intently in what has been quite a detailed debate. Overall, I am confident the House will agree to pass this Bill today to quickly put in place enhanced protections for tenants immediately upon its enactment until the winter is over, and until 18 June for some tenancies.

The broad consensus of Deputies across the Opposition is that five months of enhanced protections is not long enough and these essential protections should be extended for up to 17 months. The efforts by Government through Housing for All in delivering supply at scale over the coming months aim to counter the need for a longer application of these enhanced tenancy protections. The Government is acting now, in line with the advice of the Attorney General, to protect and balance the rights of both tenants and landlords.

Housing for All is underpinned by unprecedented levels of investment, with annual Exchequer funding standing at an average of €4 billion a year for the next five years. Budget 2023 provides €4.5 billion. This Government commitment provides the construction industry with the certainty and stability it needs to build the housing the country needs.

While global and external challenges have emerged since Housing for All was published, the Government remains focused on achieving its targets. As committed to last year at its launch, the Government will review and update the actions in Housing for All. The updated actions will be contained in the next quarterly report, to be published in the autumn. This will allow Government to respond to the challenges facing the sector and to redouble our efforts in prioritising measures to activate and accelerate the delivery of housing supply.

The Housing for All plan is working. Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures for the second quarter of this year record the highest number of completed homes in any quarter since the CSO series began in 2011. This year, the Government’s target is delivery of 24,600 homes.

In the year to the end of June, just under 25,000 new homes were completed. The number of commencements over the 12 months to the end of September stood at 27,417. These figures give confidence that the Government's overall supply target for 2022 of 24,600 homes will be exceeded, with the Central Bank forecasting 25,000 completions this year and some commentators forecasting up to 28,000. Figures on home completions, commencements, permissions, home purchases, first-time buyers and mortgage drawdowns are all very encouraging and give confidence that the Government's overall supply target for 2022 will be met. The impending changes to the Central Bank's mortgage lending rules will also help people become homeowners and move to a more suitable home. Renters will be in a better position to own their own home. The Central Bank aims to ensure sustainable lending standards in the mortgage market. Local authority home loans are also available to help people own their own homes. The latest Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures show that planning permission was approved for 44,715 homes in the year ending in the second quarter of 2022. This represents an 11.4% increase on the same time period ending in the second quarter of 2021, when the figure was 40,131.

Last Wednesday, 19 October, following collaboration with local authority partners, the Land Development Agency, LDA, renewed its Project Tosaigh invitation for expressions of interest, seeking further submissions by 4 November from those in the house building sector on delivering housing and apartments, with a focus on high-density developments within urban areas. The current call is focused on projects that have full implementable planning permission; projects capable of commencing construction in the near term and those that have commenced and which are either fully or partially paused; and high-density typologies, including apartments and duplex houses, preferably at a development scale greater than 75 units. The LDA will prioritise proposals for these higher density homes in the cities of Dublin and Cork, where the developments would otherwise struggle to be advanced in the current market environment. The LDA recently announced a new affordable purchase scheme of 95 homes in Mallow, County Cork, under its Project Tosaigh initiative. This new supply demonstrates the progress it is making in accelerating the delivery of affordable housing. Project Tosaigh will see 5,000 new social and affordable homes delivered by the end of 2026, which will complement the supply the LDA is already working on through its State land pipeline.

The Minister, Deputy O’Brien, has made a number of announcements aimed at stimulating and securing as much new supply as possible in the coming months. The Minister has made clear to local authorities that, where there is a risk of tenants being evicted into homelessness as a result of a landlord selling a home, the local authority will be supported by the Department to purchase that home, should that be the appropriate course of action. Local authorities have been encouraged to be as proactive as possible in returning vacant properties to use through the use of the voids funding programme as well as the buy and renew and repair and lease schemes. Local authorities have been asked to prioritise additional tenancy supports and prevention measures in their homelessness expenditure programmes. Additional financial support is also being made available, where needed.

My Department has approved the reintroduction of the place finder fee incentive, implemented through the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. This will be payable where suitable properties are made exclusively available to homeless families and not advertised elsewhere.

To ensure housing supply ramps up to the scale of delivery committed to under Housing for All, we must increase productivity and the number of people employed in building residential accommodation by 27,500 to 67,500 workers by the middle of the decade. We may possibly have to increase that number to 80,000 thereafter to deliver housing at the required scale. Recent data released by the Central Statistics Office show that we now have more than 167,000 people working in the construction sector, which is 20,000 more than the pre-pandemic level and 40,000 more than this time last year. We are, therefore, well on the way to having the skills to deliver the homes we need.

As housing delivery builds to the requisite level throughout the country, this Bill provides for the deferment of certain tenancy terminations taking effect over the coming winter emergency period to alleviate pressure arising from the ongoing acute supply constraints in the residential rental sector and the expected increase in homelessness presentations over the period to 31 March 2023. The Bill seeks to reduce the burden on homelessness services and the pressure on tenants and the residential tenancies market generally during the winter months.

In proposing the temporary pause on certain tenancy terminations taking effect, the Government is balancing the competing priorities of preventing people falling into homelessness and fairly stemming the continued exit of small-scale landlords from the private rental sector, which we recognise we need to do. The Government is proposing a number of exceptions to the winter emergency period provisions to ensure the core rights of a landlord to protect his or her property and to secure a rental income will not be limited in any way by this Bill. We need to retain a landlord’s right to deal with antisocial behaviour and any other breach of tenancy obligations. We need to maintain a viable rental market and retain a landlord’s ability to deal with issues such overcrowding, which may pose a fire hazard or a health and safety risk to tenants.

In addition to addressing supply constraints over the coming months, the Government will be examining what further reforms of the market are also needed. The Government is reviewing and modernising the planning system and implementing actions to increase capacity, innovation and productivity in the construction sector. Given the exit of landlords from the sector, we propose to include a new measure in the review of Housing for All, which is to be considered by Government shortly, to conduct a review of the residential rented sector by the end of the second quarter of 2023. Subject to any final terms of reference, the review will examine the current acute supply constraints within the residential rented sector with a view to identifying what measures are required to ensure the long-term sustainability of the sector, ensuring sufficient affordable supply and making it a viable and attractive tenure of choice. A report on policy considerations will be made ahead of budget 2024. In addition, consideration will be given to any relevant recommendations from the commission on housing, which is due to report by July next year.

The provisions of this Bill have been carefully framed to maximise their benefit to those considered most vulnerable and to balance the legal rights of tenants and landlords. I thank all Members of this House for facilitating the swift passage of this Bill to ensure these protections are in place for tenants at such short notice. The Minister, Deputy O’Brien, looks forward to debating the Deputies’ proposed amendments on Committee Stage later this evening.