Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome our guests in the Gallery. I will say this because I say it every time - and I do not in any way mean this to be disrespectful of the Minister of State, Deputy Higgins, as I am grateful she is here - but it is regrettable the senior Minister has not made himself available for this because it is a very serious issue. It might not be a serious issue to him but it is an incredibly serious issue to the people I am representing. The Minister of State will know well that we are in the middle of a housing crisis. In the midst of that crisis the very least we could or should expect from a half-decent government is that it would not make things worse. There is a single measure that is a homelessness prevention measure. The only measure the Government sponsors that stops people in any way from becoming homeless is the tenant in situ scheme. I am sure the local authority housing list is as bad in the Minister of State's area as it is in mine, where people have a 14-year wait for a house or any kind of accommodation. When a person gets a notice to quit, if they are on the local authority housing list and they are evicted - and there has been a 41% jump in the number of people being evicted, kindly sponsored by the Government's latest legislation - the only measure that will keep them in their home is a tenant in situ purchase.

I have two examples from Fingal County Council here, though I could paper the walls of this place with examples. The first, dated 18 February, was sent by the council to a landlord who is selling the property but willing to sell it to the council. The council said:

Unfortunately, given the number of cases progressed and the level of funding available, Fingal County Council is no longer accepting new expressions of interest in this scheme. If applications for the tenant in situ scheme reopen in 2026 it will be advertised.

That is if it reopens. There is no doubt we need it, absolutely none at all. There is another letter dated 28 April. In it the council says it is not in a position to accept new expressions of interest in the tenant in situ scheme because it does not have the funding. If you are renting privately in north County Dublin and you apply to Fingal County Council for the tenant in situ scheme the response you get makes it very clear the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage funds the scheme and it has not funded it for Fingal County Council.

The case dated 18 February is that of a mam, a dad and three children and the one dated 18 April is of a mam, a dad and one child. I am going to spare them the embarrassment of naming them or their areas because quite frankly these people are going through enough, but both families have been told there is not enough funding in the tenant in situ scheme. It is not that their places are not appropriate but that the Government has not given the council enough money to fund the purchase of their homes, so those families will now go to emergency accommodation. I can tell the Minister of State in both cases the mams came to my constituency office and I had to tell them they will likely go to emergency accommodation. As the Minister of State and I both know, they are not renting anywhere privately as there is nowhere to rent. They are heading for emergency accommodation because the Government will not fund this scheme.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy O'Reilly very much. The Minister, Deputy Browne, passes on his apologies that he could not be here and asked me to take this on his behalf.

Tenancy sustainment, which includes the purchase of private homes where a social housing tenant is in situ, is not a stand-alone programme or scheme. However, it is a priority category of the Department of housing’s social housing second-hand acquisitions programme, which helps prevent social housing-supported households in the private rental sector from becoming homeless, as the Deputy said. Tenancy sustainment, or tenant in situ, is an option for local authorities to support households who are in the most precarious housing situations. Such acquisitions are, and will continue to be, available to local authorities for use as a last resort when other options have been exhausted. They are not the sole, or indeed the primary, option. The default first option should always be securing the sustainment of the tenancy with the landlord, securing alternative accommodation through the tenancy sustainment and place finder services, or allocating a local authority or approved housing body tenancy via a new build home or relet. Where acquisitions are deemed necessary in terms of a tenant in situ, local authorities have delegated sanction to pursue individual priority acquisitions without recourse to the Department of housing, where these acquisitions are in line with the broad parameters and criteria of the second-hand acquisitions programme.

Along with the clear focus of Government on increasing the supply of new build social and affordable homes, a targeted social housing acquisition programme has been and will continue to be an important policy response to priority needs. At the end of February, so about two weeks after the first email Deputy O'Reilly quoted from 18 February, the Minister, Deputy Browne, secured funding to a total of €373 million to fund acquisitions under the Department of housing’s social housing second-hand acquisitions programme. That funding will be available for drawdown by local authorities and approved housing bodies under the 2026 programme priorities. Those priorities include: exits from homelessness, with €150 million allocated; AHB priority delivery to support older persons, persons with disabilities and care leavers, with €50 million allocated; and local authority priority acquisitions, which includes tenancy sustainment or tenant in situ acquisitions, with €157 million allocated. A contingency fund of €16 million will also be retained to be there to top up where local authorities have drawn down and fully exhausted their initial allocation, because we want to continue to enable them to be ambitious and to continue to drive these acquisitions.

Fingal County Council has been given an initial allocation of €30.7 million of this funding. That is a 54% increase on its allocation for last year. This funding is now available to the council. I note the second family in question made contact with the council on 28 April, so I am not sure why it is giving them that response given it now has its initial allocation of €30.7 million of this funding. Ultimately, the delivery of new additional social homes is the only strategic solution when it comes to long-term homelessness, with allocations from new and existing local authority and AHB social homes the primary means through which social housing-qualified households should be accommodated. I appreciate what the Deputy is saying about how the tenant in situ programme is really important for many families and that is why Fingal County Council has been given a 54% uplift in this year's allocation. I hope it will use that to support families in the Deputy's constituency like the ones who contacted her.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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I absolutely respect that the Minister of State is giving me the information she has but that information is not accurate. It does not represent a 54% increase by my figures but we can debate that another day. When people go to Fingal County Council looking for the tenant in situ scheme they are told it does not have the money. That email dated 28 April was actually a response to a query I had sent in. It said the council had responded to the landlord, which we know it had, explaining it is not in a position to accept new expressions of interest in the tenant in situ scheme accordingly. The council is not accepting expressions now. The Minister of State might say it should be or that it has the money, but that is not what the council is telling landlords.

In the middle of all this I have a mam, a dad and their son. The man, as it goes, happens to be undergoing some fairly heavy-duty cancer treatment at the moment. Their notice to quit expires in two months' time. I had to tell that woman that she, her husband and her son will have to go to emergency accommodation. I understand what is in the note the Minister of State read.

The Minister of State and I both know that in the real world there is no available private rented accommodation coming over the hill. The woman asked what the emergency accommodation was like. It is not good. I would not like to live in it and I do not think the Minister of State would like to live in it either. She cried her heart out in my office. I am the only TD in my area who has an office - I have two, in fact - and this may be part of the reason that we see more of these cases than others do. She sobbed her heart out and she said "But there must be a way surely". This woman works hard, her husband works hard, and her son. They are terrified for the future.

Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy O'Reilly for raising her constituents' experience with us here today. It is really important that everybody remembers that behind the statistics we read out in here are families. They are families exactly like that. It is for this exact reason the Government is allocating funding. According to the Department of housing, last year the Department funded a total of 68 second-hand acquisitions for Fingal County Council. Of those, 61 were for tenancy sustainment, allowing for these private tenancies to continue in preventing homelessness, and others were tenant in situ acquisitions. So far this year Fingal County Council has only seven second-hand acquisitions in the pipeline. That is the information I have from the Department of housing. It has been given €30.7 million to fund acquisition of housing. This is a 54% increase on its allocation last year.

I will certainly bring the Deputy's feedback to the Minister for housing because, ultimately, what I am being told is that there is funding there and Fingal County Council has that funding, but only seven second-hand acquisitions are in its current pipeline. Perhaps that is because there was a pipeline from last year that it is still working its way through. I do not know the detail of that but the people who do are in the local authority, and they are who the Deputy needs to engage with on this. I know and respect that the Deputy has already done that but I think we need to do that further. There is funding there for this. With this funding we want to support families who are at risk of homelessness. The funding has been allocated to the council and the Deputy has given us an example today of the kind of family for whom we need to do that.