'We are looking at tsunami of misery!' - Deputy Mary Lou McDonald- speech from 21 Mar 2023

Good morning, Clássica and Coorle, Taoiseach. Do you plan to lift the eviction ban in 10 days? If you do this, where are the working families, single people and pensioners at risk of losing their homes meant to go? This question has been put to you repeatedly and those people still wait for an answer. Without putting any measures in place, you intend to remove this protection for renters during an unprecedented housing emergency. Homes to rent are at an all-time low, rents at an all-time high, housing supply is too slow, housing prices are through the roof, we have record homelessness and emergency accommodation is full in many areas. And now your decision to lift the eviction ban throws renters to the wolves. We are talking Taoiseach about people who work hard, pay for everything and do all the right things to build a decent future. We are talking about tens of thousands trapped in the rental market who, in another generation, would have had the opportunity to buy a home of their own. This is a nightmare for renters hit with an eviction notice. Thousands more are terrified of that call from their landlord with the news that they must leave their home. One family in Wicklow, including two children, have received an eviction notice. They have lived in their rented home for 11 years. They are now considering renting storage units and living out of a car. By lifting the eviction ban, you make the political choice to escalate a housing emergency that was already out of control. And it is working people who pay the price. To be clear, the eviction ban is not a permanent solution. But what it does is buy time for government to deal with the underlying issues. You say that you are worried about landlords exiting the market. Well then, give local authorities the clear instruction and the financial firepower they need to buy those houses to keep tenants in their homes. And expand the scheme to cover those not on social housing lists. Approved housing bodies are ready to act. We have thousands of vacant homes, but government is too slow in bringing them back into use. We need pace. The government must streamline the process and remove the stifling bureaucracy involved. And finally, we know that new technologies present the way forward for housing construction. But where is the initiative from government to harness these technologies? Where is the ambition? Ultimately, we need the biggest housing program in the history of the state. And the delivery of genuinely affordable homes to rent or buy. Because Ireland is a great country and our people are up and at it. Our economy is strong. And there is scope within the public finances for a transformative housing plan. But what we need is a government with the ambition to get the job done. The Justice Department of Government to get the job done. We need to take a break. The Justice Department of Government to get the job done in the safe place. motion tonight, calls on government to reverse your decision and to extend the eviction ban. I am asking every TD to think very carefully about renters in their constituency and to protect them by voting in favour of the motion. Taoiseach, should you proceed with this cruel decision, then my question still stands. Where are those people facing eviction from April 1st meant to go? As was always the case, whether it was six months ago before the moratorium was in place or a year ago or three years ago or five years ago, it does depend on everyone's individual circumstances. It is not the case that every notice to quit turns into an eviction and it is not the case that every eviction turns into somebody living in emergency accommodation. You are conflating the three things together and I do not think it is accurate to do so. Some people will find alternative accommodation, others will need to rely on the state to help them find accommodation. That is the way it would have been six months ago before this moratorium existed, it is the way it would have been three years ago, it is the way it would be in February or March if you had your way and extended the eviction ban until then. This was a temporary measure. It was only put in place for the winter period and it will end on a phased basis from the end of March of this year. Unfortunately, when it was in place, it did not reduce the number of homeless people in government-provided emergency accommodation precisely because there are so many other factors at play when it comes to the number of people who are homeless, lots of different reasons why people become homeless, including family breakdown, for example, and lots of different reasons why it is difficult to lift people out of homelessness, although we are doing that all the time. What it did do is provide time, provide tenants with a number of additional months to find alternative accommodation where that is possible, and also provide the government with time. We did use that time, over 6,000 new social houses built in the last quarter of the year, and also extra emergency accommodation provided if it is needed. It did also cause problems, and these are real problems that should not be dismissed. People not able to move into the property that they own, people coming home from abroad, 30,000 people every year, citizens come home from abroad, some of them unable to move back into the homes that they rented out before they left. People who bought properties, often for their children to live in if they went to college, not being able to do that in September, which is what you are proposing. It also pushed more landlords into leaving the sector, and I believe it discourages new landlords from coming in as well, all making the supply situation, which is at the heart of this crisis, all the more worse. The plan from Sinn Féin is clear, and I have read your motion, and I do not think it is a good one. I would ask people to consider it carefully before they vote for it, if they choose to do so. What you are proposing is to continue a ban on people being able to move back into their own properties, people being allowed to move children or family members back into their own properties, you have put in no exemption for that in your motion, and you are also saying that we should extend it until January, because you believe that things can be made fundamentally different in such a short period. The truth is it would probably just make matters worse then than they are now, and you would see a situation where you might see even more landlords choosing to sell up, and I think that would be a mistake, or you would discourage more landlords from coming in. Simply kicking the can down the road, Deputy, is not a housing policy, in my view. The solution to this is a different one. It is more social housing, which we are doing, it is the tenant-in-situ scheme, which we are doing, it is more supply, such as through Creecona and changes to the Fair Deal, it is tax changes to encourage more landlords to stay in and more to re-enter, and also it is increasing funding for homeless prevention. We agreed in the counter motion today a number of things. We agreed that there would be a tax package in the budget for small landlords, and that will take effect this year, to encourage them to stay in and enter the sector. This was after consultations with our parliamentary party and some of the independent groups as well. We have agreed to extend the Creecona refurbishment grant scheme for people who are doing it up derelict properties for the purpose of renting them, and those built prior to 2007. We have agreed that if someone rents out a room in their house, it will not affect their social welfare entitlements or their medical card entitlements, and that is open to local authority tenancies as well. We have also agreed, as I said earlier, to give local authorities authority to buy up to 1,500 homes where people are facing a notice to quit, and that will be a solution for a lot of people. When you re-entered the office of Taoiseach in December, you said that housing would be your priority. Your first major housing decision is to put thousands of renters at risk of losing their homes. With your eyes wide open, you intend to lift the eviction ban, knowing that this will spell disaster for so many. It will mean people losing their homes, and it will mean some looking for homeless, emergency accommodation that is not there. For others it will mean sofa surfing, or moving back into the box room of your parents' home with your children in Taoiseach. Either, either, or. We are looking at a tsunami of misery again visited on our people. Now you cobble together measures, or you reiterate schemes that are not working efficiently or to scale as some kind of appropriate response. Well Taoiseach, it is not. You sound to me like somebody who has thrown in the towel and thrown renters to the wolves. You do not actually believe that these things can be solved, but they can. To protect renters we need an extension of the eviction ban, and we need government pace and ambition. As a matter of fact, we need a new government. That much is evidently clear. As is so often the case, you seem to think that the solution to the housing crisis is just you being Taoiseach and your party being government. You put no solutions forward in your contributions, nor do you in your motion. It seems to me that you see housing not as a crisis to be overcome or a problem to be solved, but as a political issue to be exploited. There are four things you could do. There are four things you could do, Deputy, to help if you are interested in helping. One, you could stop objecting to new housing. You have objected to 2,000 homes in your constituency alone. Your party has objected to 12,000. You particularly object to one beds, because the people living in them are transients, to use your language. You particularly object to build to rent, even though we need more properties to rent. You could drop your opposition to help to buy in first home. A lot of first-time buyers know there is an election coming in the next two years and are starting to read about your policies. We had more first-time buyers in January than any month since records began in 2010. They know that Sinn Fein is going to take away the help to buy and take away first home. They are concerned about that, and you should take that threat off their backs. The third thing you can do is you can stop threatening landlords, Deputy. Stop threatening landlords with increased restrictions and regulations and more taxes, because that is just going to cause more of them to leave, Deputy. You can acknowledge that your plan to extend the eviction ban until the end of January will only do one thing. It will make the situation worse then, but perhaps that is what you want. No, we're way over time. We're way over time.