Fintan Warfield (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The guests in the Public Gallery are also very welcome. I commend Senators Ruane, Flynn, Black and Higgins for bringing forward this motion, which is a welcome opportunity to discuss housing outside the confines of legislation, which many of us do often. I thank them for tabling this motion.

I wish to address two items in the motion, that is, vacant homes and child and family homelessness. I also want to pick up on the right to housing issue that was mentioned by Senators Fitzpatrick and Boyhan. It is time for us to set a date for the referendum on a right to housing. Inserting that right into the Constitution was supported by 84% of the Constitutional Convention in 2014. As Senator Fitzpatrick said, we are not saying that inserting that right into the Constitution will in and of itself solve the housing crisis on its own, but it would force this Government, and any Government after it, to ensure that any legislation or policy is proofed and that it reasonably affects that right.

As Senator Boyhan said, I do not believe this issue needs to go to another committee. Home for Good, a civil society campaign, has the wording for the legislation ready to go and has sent it to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Seanad Éireann, through Senator Fitzpatrick's motion last June, supports the insertion of a right to housing into the Constitution. The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage has also considered the legislation from Home for Good. I think most of the committee support it. The Government needs to proceed with the Attorney General and Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to prepare a constitutional amendment on the right to housing and set a date for that referendum.

I want to talk about the troubling trends in terms of family homelessness and then come to child homelessness, which is mentioned in the motion. The Dublin Region Homeless Executive homelessness report indicates that new family homeless presentations are trending steadily upwards.In January in Dublin, 19 more families were accessing emergency homes accommodation than there were in December. When we compare January this year with January last year, 79 more families were accessing emergency accommodation in Dublin. When people do get to into emergency accommodation, they are also spending longer in it. In January 2022, 21% of families were in emergency accommodation for more than two years. Nobody should be in emergency accommodation for more than six months. Many of the people who have been in emergency accommodation have been homeless for three or, in some cases, four years. The Government must accept that to deal with this issue, we need to increase the delivery of real social housing and Housing First tenancies. Two Bills have passed Second Stage in the Dáil in this term: Sinn Féin’s family homeless prevention Bill and the Simon Communities homeless prevention Bill, and they need to be set up.

The motion mentions Article 27 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. I want to reference the Children’s Rights Alliance report card from 2022. It is a wake-up call for these Houses and for the Government in terms of our failure to deal with the rise in homelessness. We need to prevent children from entering homelessness in the first place. Again, the Simon Communities homelessness prevention Bill must be progressed. Legislation has also been put forward by Focus Ireland that seeks to do that.

The previous Government had a vacant homes strategy that was an abject failure. Its repair and lease scheme had a target of returning 3,000 homes back into stock by 2022. It only delivered 273 homes. That was 8% of the target. While no targets were set for the buy and renew scheme, 670 homes were delivered in five years. That is difficult to understand. We seem to be continuing by poorly resourcing these schemes. We have the aim of returning 2,500 vacant homes back into use by 2026. That is only 500 homes per year. As Senator Boyhan has mentioned, the problem is not primarily at local authority level. We therefore need to fund those schemes and we need a real sense of urgency in bringing vacancy back into use. We also need to get proper data. We see varying figures on the number of homes that are vacant. We need better data on that. We need a dedicated vacant homes officer in every local authority.

I commend the motion. It has Sinn Féin’s support. I commend the Civil Engagement Group on bringing it forward.