Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the move by the Government to bring in an eviction ban over the winter. This happens every year in France because it is considered cruel to allow people to be left on the side of the road due to evictions over the winter months. It is standard practice there every year. We need to use the time between now and March to bring back properties into the social housing sector. We have heard a lot of talk about how small landlords fleeing the sector is a leading cause of homelessness, but 62,000 people who are reliant on the private rented sector should be in the social housing sector. Average rents of €1,900 were paid to them over 2019, equating to approximately €20,000 a year. Those people are in need of long-term social housing and we need to bring them back into the social housing sector, not leave them at the whim of the private rented sector, which is the leading cause of family homelessness.

The tenant in situscheme is in place and the Government has committed money to it, but local authorities can be quite reluctant to use it and often come up with reasons properties cannot be bought. I dealt with a couple of such cases over the summer and the reasons were not very strong. In one example, a former social housing property that was built by Dublin City Council is now owned by a landlord who is evicting a mother and her three children, but the council will not buy it because, as its representatives said when they appeared before the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage last week, it does not want to buy landlords' property. As far as I am concerned, if something is good enough for supported social housing through the housing assistance payment, HAP, it should be good enough for social housing. Those 62,000 people who need to be brought back into the long-term, secure social housing sector will be brought back by scaling up the building of social and affordable housing but also, as a short-term measure to stem the flow of families entering homelessness, we need to ensure local authorities buy under the tenant in situscheme.

Separately, I welcome the fact that yesterday, UK MPs voted under the Public Order Bill to bring in buffer zones in England and Wales. Buffer zones already operate through local authorities for clinics such as BPAS in Richmond and the Marie Stopes centre in Ealing, but it is welcome they have been brought in on a legislative basis. The Joint Committee on Health is today considering hearings on safe access zones and Senator Gavan and I have co-sponsored a Bill on the matter. It is welcome that this has been done in Westminster and I would like to see such a measure brought in here as soon as possible.