Kathryn Reilly (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. In my contribution on this issue, I will mention the wider problem of homelessness. A couple of weeks ago, someone came to speak at our party's meeting. One point made was that some of the exits from homelessness were closing, as there was not enough social housing and there were issues with high rents and a lack of availability in the private rental sector. We need to be realistic - another tsunami of homelessness is coming our way, and it will be one of the defining issues of the coming years. We would be naive to ignore it or to believe that the current plans are sufficient to deal with the issue. There will be additional homeless people by the end of 2015, but there is no plan to deal with them. When the resources allocated to the current plan have been used, that will be it. As television adverts say, when it is gone, it is gone. We need a steady stream of social housing to be made available.

We know the facts of the crises facing social housing and low-income private rental tenants. There are at least 90,000 applicants on the waiting list, with 77,000 people in receipt of rent supplement at a cost of more than €340 million. The dogs in the street know that we need more housing, private rents are too high and more families are facing homelessness or are in emergency accommodation. Many people who did not wish to acknowledge this problem in recent years have finally been forced to, particularly after comments by activists such as Fr. Peter McVerry put the issue centre stage. There is no more room for a see no evil, hear no evil attitude. Homelessness is more visible on our streets every day. While it used to be just the odd person here or there, it is increasingly common for families - little children with their parents - to be on the streets. This is heartbreaking and we cannot ignore it anymore.

This is the first substantial housing legislation to be introduced in recent years, but not only does it fail to provide concrete solutions to the problem, it also partly seeks to sweep the problem under the carpet and redefine the parameters of what constitutes housing and housing need so that we might pretend that a solution has been found. For the 90,000 applicants on the waiting list, the problem is not a definition. They are men, women and children in need of secure, affordable homes.

The HAP has been mentioned by many Senators. At first, it was presented as an opportunity to review many of the glaring problems in the rent supplement that we have all encountered in our time as public representatives. Allowing HAP tenants to work will be a positive step, but the negative elements of the plan are unacceptable. Under the Bill, HAP would constitute adequate housing and, as such, tenants would no longer be considered to have a housing need, resulting in their being removed from waiting lists.

Following firm questioning on this issue, the Minister of State replied that HAP tenants would be able to apply for transfers to council-owned homes and incremental purchase schemes, but the problem is that not all council areas have transfer lists and most have preconditions that would disadvantage new HAP tenants and wipe away the many years they had already spent waiting for housing. Some people will be damned if they do and damned if they do not. The Minister of State has claimed this is not true. Given what we have seen in this Bill, however, it constitutes an attack on the notion of social housing.

By its definition, private accommodation is insecure and open to the whims of the market and the landlord, and it has not served as a good, steady and affordable option for those who are unemployed, on low incomes or in precarious employment. In recent years, many more families have fallen into danger of losing their homes and being put onto the streets because of the whims of their landlords, especially when the latter have decided that they can get more rent from someone else. The people being squeezed do not trust that this Bill is enough.

My party submitted amendments in the Dáil and will do so again in this House to bring clarity to the Bill, protect the interests of those with a real housing need and propose better models for tenant-authority engagements on issues such as rent repayments. We oppose the plan to deduct rent arrears from source with no stipulation as to when this model can and cannot be enforced.

As most would agree, housing is a right and those in need of it, as well as social housing tenants, need to have that right protected, upheld and treated with equal dignity and respect. I look forward to the Minister of State's comments and further engagement with her as the Bill progresses through its Stages.