Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Leas-Chathaoirleach. I thank the Minister of State for bringing this legislation to the House. I have not had the opportunity previously to address him and I thank him for coming in.

I am speaking as Fianna Fáil spokesperson for housing, local government and heritage. I was first elected to Dublin City Council in 2004 and was in Dublin City Council for more than 16 years when it was essentially established as a housing authority. For more than 16 years I have been dealing with people and trying to help them address their housing needs. I went from a situation when I was first elected to helping people apply to the local authority to navigate the process to secure a home, to helping them avoid becoming homeless. My constituency of Dublin Central is probably the one which has been hit greatest by the housing crisis. When I talk about this Bill today I see it for what it is, which is a very important piece of legislation which aims to protect renters who cannot pay their rent and helps to protect them from becoming homeless. However, I have to ask the Minister of State to indulge me for a minute or two to talk about the housing crisis. The housing crisis is not just about the acute end of it we see in homelessness that hits the headlines but is affecting people of every age and, quite honestly, every income level.

In this example of one family, and there are hundreds of such cases I have dealt with on a personal basis, both parents are working with four young children, they are on a housing list for more than seven years in rented accommodation and became homeless. They ended up being put in a hotel out in Ballymun and have to take a shuttle to the airport, take a bus into town and then take a bus back out to Cabra to get their children to school. The children’s attendance at school suffered and it had never been a problem or had they been late for school. The parents' ability to get to work suffered and the grandparents and older siblings ended up with an overcrowded situation as well. It affected everybody including their employers because they were then without very valuable workers. As a Government, we have an enormous challenge to address the housing crisis and we need to do that by having a significant change in attitude in how we see housing. It must be seen as a vital social infrastructure and cannot be seen as a financial asset. This Government is committed to taking on the challenge and to ensuring that there will be a significant State-led public house-building programme so that we will recover the lost decade in social house-building that we have experience in this State.

I wish the Minister of State well and he has all of our support in doing that but we have to act with urgency and ambition like this is an emergency, the way we did in the pandemic. We need to take this housing challenge and ensure that by the end of this four years there is a significant change in the delivery of housing in this State with public housing on public land and affordable housing to both purchase and rent. The Minister of State has our commitment to work with him on that.

On the Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020 , this is the third extension of the emergency legislation that was introduced in March. It aims to target those renters. I am thinking primarily of those young workers, the young women, the retail workers and those working in hospitality whose incomes have been dramatically cut by the pandemic. This is a targeted approach which will ensure that those renters are protected from eviction or from rent increases. Most critically, it will also ensure that the State will actively support those renters to avoid homelessness, rent increases and evictions. In that respect it is very welcome. From my experience, knowing how many people who have come to me who have been renting for a long time like the family I described earlier and faced with a notice to quit on the basis that the home is going to be sold, it is very important that the Residential Tenancies Board is being resourced to tackle those scenarios. I have seen those scenarios in real life and it is important that the Minister of State’s Department is giving 15 extra staff members to the Residential Tenancy Board to ensure that there are no bogus attempts to evict renters and deprive them of their home.

What is also very important is the other practical response that the Department is taking with the call for housing. I got to the bottom of all of those cases by going to Dublin City Council. When the person came to me I said to them to ask the landlord if they will sell the property to Dublin City Council. We would then know if the landlord was really selling it and if they were, Dublin City Council would engage with them. Dublin City Council, to its great credit, is the one local authority that has to a significant extent purchased properties and has managed to keep tenants in those properties and avoid homelessness.

The Minister of State’s call for housing from the Department is very welcome. What this does is it puts that call out there to all landlords who wish to sell properties. If they want to sell their property they can sell it back to the State. If their tenants are on the social housing list they will be retained in that tenancy. That is a practical measure and is not one that requires any legislation and what the Minister of State has done is welcome.

That is the type of approach we need. We need to stop people being made homeless and to secure what tenancies we have but, most critically, if we are going to address the housing crisis, we have to address supply. We must get on with a significant State-led public house-building programme. We need to have public housing on public land and affordable housing in sustainable communities close to where people want to live, work and enjoy their lives.