Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I, too, welcome the Minister to the House. The lifting of the no-fault eviction ban is the most important issue I deal with at this time. I welcome the opportunity to discuss it with him this evening. As someone with community clinics, I can tell him that the ban is the number one topic in Kildare South this week. At clinics in Newbridge, Kildare town, Monasterevin and Athy, people wanted to discuss the lifting of the ban. They basically wanted to know where they are to go. That is the number one issue. The issue is also what you say next to people with a notice to quit who sit in front of you and tell their story. When I look at what is available in Kildare South, including all the towns I have just mentioned, I see there is nothing for these people. That is the bottom line.

An additional problem, mentioned at a meeting of the housing committee, of which I am temporarily a member, is that the renters cannot contact the local authority at the appropriate time. It is a problem because, when they contact a local authority, they are told, because of the number of people trying to make contact, to come back a day or two before their eviction date. That is just adding to the stress. There is no other way of describing it. The no-fault eviction ban was the security blanket such people had but now the Government has lifted it and taken it away. This is a political issue, no matter what we say about it, and it entails a choice. It is the biggest issue I deal with daily.

Much has been said about the Government and having no cliff edge, but I have seen over the past few weeks that people have gone over the cliff edge. Some are just hanging on to it by their fingertips, waiting for the notice to quit. They ask the local authority what they should do on the eviction date and it tells them to come back to it a day or couple of days before the date. It is not aware of the number of eviction bans that people will present with. People are worried. I speak to them consistently about this because, as I have said, this is the biggest issue I deal with.

The decision that was made was wrong. Why were the solutions the Minister put in place in the past couple of days not in place at the start of the eviction ban period? When we asked about the tenant in situscheme in February, by way of the Labour Party motion in the Dáil on housing, we were ignored. We asked for the scheme to be ramped up but the Minister has been talking about ramping it up only in the past couple of days.

The other day at a meeting of the housing committee, we had representatives of the local authorities present.We asked them how they are treating tenants in situand we were basically told it will be done on a case-by-case basis. I also asked about what happens when a tenant who is from another local authority area gets a notice to quit and I was told there were no conversations going on.