Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Listening to the Minister and the Minister of State, you would swear to God we were not in the middle of a housing crisis. You would swear to God we did not have rents at record levels, house prices at record levels and a whole generation locked out of any prospect of homeownership the longer the Government stays in power. Listening to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, you would swear 11,754 people were not in emergency accommodation. Under his watch, 3,400 children are in emergency accommodation tonight, and the Government has made a conscious decision to increase that number over the coming days. Three thousand eviction notices will take effect in ten days' time, and there is a decision to be made tonight and tomorrow, when the vote is cast, as to whether Deputies are going to give support to those individuals or whether they are consciously going to ensure they will become homeless in the middle of a housing crisis the likes of which we have never seen before in the modern history of this State, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

I put that to the Regional Independent Group as well, because there is no hiding space here anymore. Every one of us has our eyes wide open because every one of us, on this side of the House anyway - and I am sure it is the same with the Deputies in that group - has had countless letters, emails and visits to our constituency offices with a simple question, namely, where people are to go. That is the question the Government cannot answer because for the vast majority of these people, there is nowhere to go. There is no rental accommodation in many of these communities that they can just move into, or if there is, it is for sky-high rents. Seventeen local authorities have no additional emergency accommodation and others are at breaking point, yet in the middle of this crisis, knowing these facts, the Government is going to decide to increase the numbers of families and children into homelessness. My party colleague, Deputy Ward, who experienced homelessness, talks about the realities of that and the shame of it. The Government and every Deputy who votes to increase homelessness should be absolutely ashamed to do that to mothers, fathers and children, knowing fine well the long-term impact that will have on them, their mental health and the development of the child.

This is no longer just a city problem. The Minister talked about us scaremongering people regarding evictions. Does he think these eviction notices are fictional? These people are being evicted, some of them in ten days' time. In my constituency, I saw something I never thought I would see. A mother and her two youngest children have moved into the box room of their parents' house and there is no room for the other children, so the teenagers are couch-surfing. That is what is happening in the real world.

The Government needs to wise up and do the right thing, and every Deputy needs to vote to extend this ban.

Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)
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I listened carefully to the contribution of the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and in particular that of the Minister of State, given we share a constituency and he will have dealt with some of the people I have dealt with, as I know because they have told me they have been to his constituency office, but he has not answered the question they have been asking me.

The question is one many Deputies on this side of the House have asked, namely, where people are to go. I have been visited by families of children with special needs who have been given notices to quit. There have been 211 notices to quit in our constituency and the question the Minister of State has not answered is where they are supposed to go. He knows for a fact that the emergency accommodation in Limerick is full, as it has been for some time. The temporary emergency provision sends away ten people, on average, every night. They have nowhere to go. The hotels are full, families do not end up staying in the same room each night because they have to move from hotel to hotel and they do not know where they will stay next. It is a problem for children going to school and it is having a very damaging impact on their ability to grow. The Government was told this as far back as seven years ago when Fine Gael was in government and had a housing Minister but utterly failed to do anything about that.

The eviction ban, as we all know, is ending in ten days' time. It is the wrong decision. I appeal to the Minister, in respect of Dublin Fingal, and the Minister of State, in respect of Limerick City, to reconsider. They know we are going to have a problem and that these people have nowhere to go. They cannot tell them where to go nor answer that question. No member of the Government has answered that question. The Minister and the Minister of State covered themselves in waffle for ten minutes. I know the people the Minister of State met because they came to my office as well. He has no answer for those people. It is the wrong decision for people working in emergency accommodation, because more families will have to be turned away than has been the case, and it is the wrong decision for local councils such as that in Limerick, whose massive housing lists will grow. The decision will force more people to seek housing solutions from their local council, increasing the numbers on already-high waiting lists.

It is the wrong decision also for business, and the Government's housing policies are creating huge problems for our economy, as representatives of Chambers Ireland noted at a recent appearance before the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment. The greatest challenge facing small and medium enterprises this year is the lack of available talent, which is driven by the unavailability of affordable and appropriate housing throughout most of the country. The Government has abandoned renters, but perhaps now that businesses are worried, with growth and jobs affected, they will move on that.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is important to remember exactly why the ban on evictions was introduced last November. The Minister knows, given he brought a memo to Cabinet in October that told us there were 19 local authorities with no additional emergency accommodation capacity. It stated that if a ban was not effected, a significant number of single people, couples, parents of children and pensioners would end up with nowhere to go. They would have been forced to sleep rough or present to Garda stations. That is why the ban was introduced. We pleaded with the Government to undertake a series of emergency interventions to ease the pressure on the emergency accommodation system in order that we would be in a better position now, and it refused to do it. In fact, all the things the Minister listed in his contribution, and which his new Minister of State tried to list but got his numbers wrong, were steps the Government was already planning to take before the emergency ban was effected, and on most of those things, it did not meet any of its targets.

In the debates we have had, the Government has given a number of reasons as to why the ban should not be extended. It said the previous ban did not work, which is not true given it reduced homeless presentations by families by 10%, and if it had not been introduced, things would be much worse today. It said we would lose more single-property landlords from the market, whereas the very immediate consequence of ending the ban is that those properties will go. For seven years, single-property landlords have been leaving the market as a result of both positive equity and the dysfunctional management of the private rental sector by the Minister and his predecessors. The Government indicated that extending the ban would disincentivise investment, but the only new investment into the private rental sector is from institutional investors, and they are not affected by a ban on no-fault evictions because they do not evict on those grounds, although, as the Minister knows, those investors are now withdrawing from the market because of rising interest rates. Contrary to the Government's claim that it has ramped up the supply of social and affordable housing, it again missed its targets, which were too low. It is interesting that in all the Government's commentary in recent days, it has not told us how many affordable-purchase or cost-rental units were delivered last year, because when we get the figures, the missed targets will be even worse than those for social housing.

I might respond briefly to some of the steps the Minister said the Government is taking. As Deputy Cian O'Callaghan rightly stated , representatives of the County and City Management Association and departmental officials stated today that the tenant in situscheme is not working, and that is because the Minister has not given a clear instruction to local authorities to suspend the scheme of allocations, have a presumption to buy subject to cost and condition and prioritise the allocation of staff to purchase.

That is why the numbers are so slow. If the Minister does not reform the scheme, those targets will not be met either. In addition, he has not yet extended it to cost rental. Officials in the Department told us today that a decision will be taken soon. The Minister could have taken that decision last year and extended the cost rental equity loan to approved housing bodies. If he had done so, the residents of Tathony House, whose case is regularly raised by Deputy Boyd Barrett, would have been in a much better position.

The Minister stated that he is increasing supply. This is the big deceit of the Government and its predecessor. The reason there is a housing crisis is that, year after year, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have not supplied an adequate volume of social and affordable homes. One third of people in the private rental sector are subsidised by HAP, RAS or rent supplement. The overwhelming majority of those people want to be in social housing. Another 90,000 people, approximately, in the private rental sector cannot afford their rent. They need to be in affordable homes to rent or buy.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Which the Deputy is against.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The central cause of this crisis is the Minister and his policies. Deputy Barry was correct. The Minister will be remembered like some of his predecessors. Some of us are old enough to remember when Margaret Thatcher withdrew free milk from schools in Britain, giving rise to the campaign slogan, "Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher". The proposal by John Bruton to introduce VAT on children's shoes almost brought down a Government. That is the Minister's legacy. It is what people will associate with the name Darragh O'Brien in perpetuity - the Minister who deliberately increased homelessness-----

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Hear, hear.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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-----of single people, adults and pensioners. Nothing in what I have heard from the Government today gives me any confidence that, month after month, we will not have rising homelessness figures.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy is against everything.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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We will be here to remind the Minister because the people he is evicting have come to us for support and for us to be their voice.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Bring forward proposals.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Until the Minister is out of office, they will not get the homes they desperately need and rightly deserve.

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Hear, hear.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Insofar as a division has been called, in accordance with Standing Order 80(2), it is postponed until the weekly division time tomorrow.