Paul Murphy blasts Government over housing emergency and homelessness
Paul Murphy spoke in support of a motion to legally recognise the housing emergency, condemning Government decisions on evictions, housing spending and the suspension of schemes that protect tenants. He urged immediate reinstatement of the tenant in situ scheme and increased budgetary provision to prevent families being pushed into homelessness.
People for Profit strongly supported the motion, praising the Deputy who brought it forward and arguing it contains emergency measures the Government should have implemented years ago. Murphy recalled that a similar motion in 2014 was rejected by the Fine Gael Labour Government and said the current motion responds to an escalating crisis.
Murphy highlighted long-term trends in homelessness, noting there were 3,607 people in emergency accommodation when he was first elected in 2014 and that the situation has worsened to more than four times that number. He said this morning over 4,600 children woke up in emergency accommodation and pointed to a jump from 9,825 in March 2023 to 15,378 at the end of February — a rise he linked to policy choices including lifting the eviction ban.
Murphy criticised the Government's suspension of the tenant in situ scheme, saying it removed the only protection between families and homelessness. He described applicants waiting on average a year, with some people — in one case 18 months — having a settled agreement with a landlord only to have the process paused, leaving them at immediate risk while the State seeks to reduce scheme costs.
Murphy detailed State payments to private property owners for emergency accommodation, citing a report that the Government paid private owners 140 million euros in 2023. He gave examples including a high annual payment for tenement-style accommodation on Gardiner Street and named an owner paid over a million euros a year in 2022 and 2023. He also highlighted attempts by the owner of Tramco in Rathmines to evict tenants illegally to convert buildings into emergency accommodation.
Murphy praised tenant-led actions, noting that evictions in Rathmines were stopped by tenants with support from CATU. He concluded by calling for immediate reinstatement of the tenant in situ scheme, a larger budget to house everyone in need, and mass grassroots action to counter what he described as a Government that prioritises landlord and developer profits over housing rights.
Support for the motion
People for Profit strongly supported the motion, praising the Deputy who brought it forward and arguing it contains emergency measures the Government should have implemented years ago. Murphy recalled that a similar motion in 2014 was rejected by the Fine Gael Labour Government and said the current motion responds to an escalating crisis.
Rising homelessness figures
Murphy highlighted long-term trends in homelessness, noting there were 3,607 people in emergency accommodation when he was first elected in 2014 and that the situation has worsened to more than four times that number. He said this morning over 4,600 children woke up in emergency accommodation and pointed to a jump from 9,825 in March 2023 to 15,378 at the end of February — a rise he linked to policy choices including lifting the eviction ban.
Tenant in situ scheme suspension and personal cases
Murphy criticised the Government's suspension of the tenant in situ scheme, saying it removed the only protection between families and homelessness. He described applicants waiting on average a year, with some people — in one case 18 months — having a settled agreement with a landlord only to have the process paused, leaving them at immediate risk while the State seeks to reduce scheme costs.
State payments and private profiteering
Murphy detailed State payments to private property owners for emergency accommodation, citing a report that the Government paid private owners 140 million euros in 2023. He gave examples including a high annual payment for tenement-style accommodation on Gardiner Street and named an owner paid over a million euros a year in 2022 and 2023. He also highlighted attempts by the owner of Tramco in Rathmines to evict tenants illegally to convert buildings into emergency accommodation.
Grassroots resistance and demands
Murphy praised tenant-led actions, noting that evictions in Rathmines were stopped by tenants with support from CATU. He concluded by calling for immediate reinstatement of the tenant in situ scheme, a larger budget to house everyone in need, and mass grassroots action to counter what he described as a Government that prioritises landlord and developer profits over housing rights.
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Transcript
People for Profit strongly support this motion. We thank Deputy Healy not just for bringing forward this motion today but for years and years pushing the necessity of legally recognising the housing emergency as an emergency and the necessity for radical action. It contains the kind of emergency measures that the Government should have been implementing ten years ago. I was first elected in 2014. That year there was a similar motion which called for recognition of a housing emergency. It was rejected by the Fine Gael Labour Government. At the time when we were rightly saying it was an emergency there were 3,607 homeless people living in emergency accommodation. Ten years later the housing crisis has escalated so much that there is more than four times that many people trapped in that terrible situation. This morning over 4,600 children in one of the richest countries in the world woke up in emergency accommodation. For most of the last ten years the Government has insisted that housing is its top priority. I don't know how they managed to keep a straight face through most of that. But actions speak louder than words. Two years ago this week the Government lifted the eviction ban. We predicted what would happen and it did. A massive increase in homelessness. 9,825 in March 2023 to 15,378 at the end of February. A jump of 57 per cent. The truth is that the whole time the priority has been to increase property prices. Landlords, landowners, developers, vulture funds and banks can keep making profits. I am not sure that this Government is even pretending that the housing crisis is a top priority anymore. Ten years ago it had a target of ending long term homelessness by 2016. Then it was ending the use of hotels for homeless people by July 2016. I don't think there is any target for ending homelessness now. In fact, it is the reverse. The Government seems absolutely content to watch the homeless figures go up month after month. The only time they get concerned about them is when an election is coming and then it lies about the numbers and it delays putting them out. The latest example of the Government's couldn't care less attitude is its reckless suspension of the tenant in situ scheme. The effect in my constituency and right across the country has been to take away the only thing standing between families and homelessness. There are families already in this process for many, many months. The average waiting time is a year. They had agreement with their landlord. They had been told they were finally going to get their forever home. Now they have had that cruelly, by this Government, snatched away from them. In one case I am dealing with, the person has been going through this never ending process for 18 months but now everything is paused. She is facing into homelessness for no other reason than the Government is dragging its feet, presumably in an effort to cut the cost of the scheme. We know that the new Budget will buy a lot fewer homes than the old one and that the point of the restrictions and prioritisation being imposed is to make sure that fewer people get it. The Government must reinstate this scheme immediately and increase the Budget to the level needed to provide for everyone who needs to access it. That is what it would do if it was serious about addressing this crisis. Of course the Government has no problem handing out bigger and bigger wads of cash to landlords and to operators of private emergency accommodation. That is what the threats to abolish the rent pressure zones are about, removing any and all limits to rates of profit in the housing market so rents and prices can skyrocket even further. The currency reported last week that in 2023 the Government paid private property owners 140 million euros for emergency accommodation. A typical example is a million euros a year for tenement style accommodation on Gardiner Street in Dublin where the State is paying through the nose to warehouse over a thousand people in a giant slum. One of the slumlords listed, Joe Somerville, was paid over a million euros a year by the State for emergency homeless accommodation in 2022 and 2023 and has a history of illegally evicting tenants in order to turn their homes into emergency accommodation. It is not an isolated example. The owner of Tramco in Rathmines has been attempting to do the same, illegally evicting long standing tenants to turn the building into homeless accommodation. Thankfully, stopped by action, stopped for now, by action by the tenants and supported by CATU. That is the kind of grassroots action and a mass movement that we need to beat this Government.