Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns asked how was it that Fianna Fáil, “rightly proud of its previous record of housing generations between the 1930s and 1970s is now endorsing homelessness not housing”.
“Your own Minister Darragh O’Brien has been clear, homelessness will increase as a result of this decision,” she said. “There is no debate about that.”
The Cork South-West TD said the Government wasn’t “being forced to do this” and that there were other options. Ms Cairns said the “half-baked plan” which they claimed will support tenants and landlords “won’t be in place for many months” and called on the Government to reverse its decision.
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said the decision to lift the eviction ban was “absolutely unforgivable”. The Dún Laoghaire TD said rather than engage in “constant deflection, justification in enunciating your supposed successes in housing policy”, the Government had to tell people who are facing homelessness “what they are going to do”. He said people facing eviction were scared, humiliated and terrified of the consequences of their situation for their children.
In response to Mr Doherty, Tánaiste Micheál Martin said the only people trotting out populist soundbites in relation to housing was Mr Doherty and his party.
Mr Martin said “the corner was turned last year” in relation to ramping up housing supply, from 20,000 new-builds in 2021 to 30,000 in 2022.
The Fianna Fáil leader said Sinn Féin opposed the Help to Buy scheme, the First Homes Scheme and the Land Development Agency as well housing schemes at local authority level and the party “talk out of both sides of your mouth on this”.
Mr Martin said Sinn Féin was “demonising landlords” for the “last three and four years” adding “you want them out of the market”.
The Donegal TD said week after week Fianna Fáil “trot out slogans” that it was the party of home ownership which was “complete and utter nonsense”. “This is a wealthy country but Government decision after decision has taken the basic right of having a roof over your head away from an entire generation of people,” Mr Doherty said.
Homeless family told to go to Garda station for ‘safe place to stay’, Doherty says
A family was advised to present at a Garda station for a “safe place to stay” after South Dublin County Council and the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive said there was no emergency accommodation available for them, Sinn Féin has told the Dáil.
The party’s deputy leader Pearse Doherty said under the Government’s watch families are now being told by local authorities that “where they need to go to stay safe is to the local Garda station”.
There were heated exchanges during Leaders’ Questions again on Thursday, as the Opposition criticised the Government’s decision not to extend the current eviction ban, which is due to expire at the end of this month.
Mr Doherty said his party colleague, Dublin Mid-West TD Mark Ward received a letter from South Dublin County Council. “It [the letter] is very clear. It is one family who find themselves homeless. This family is made up of one adult and two children,” he said.
“The council have told the family that they have no emergency accommodation for them. The Dublin Regional Homeless Executive has told the family that there is no available accommodation for them, and this is before the eviction ban is even lifted.
“The family were told by the council to present at a Garda station for, and I quote, ‘a safe place to stay’.”
The Government does not have projections as to how many people are expected to enter homelessness over the coming months after the eviction ban expires, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien has said.
Mr O’Brien repeated that the Government had made a “difficult” but the “right decision” that was in the “best public interest in the medium-term” not to extend the moratorium on evictions.
“That’s what you have to do in Government, you have to, not just make populist decisions…you have to make the decisions that are right, even if they are difficult,” he said.
Coalition leaders decided late on Monday night not to extend the moratorium on evictions, which will begin to lapse as planned at the end of this month.
While the ban is coming to an end on March 31st, many renters will remain protected until June due to measures provided for in the legislation.
The Minister was answering questions from Opposition TDs in the Dáil on Thursday. Labour TD Duncan Smith asked Mr O’Brien what homelessness figures was he expecting “when we do reach the cliff edge”. Mr Smith said homelessness was at “an all-time record” at 11,754 adding “how high do you think these numbers will go in the next three to four months in real terms”.
“To what extent will these homeless figures increase in the coming two to three months, you have to have an expectation to what these figures will be given all the data that is out there, that should be, and I imagine is being channelled through your department,” the Labour TD said.
In response, the Minister said “we don’t have projections for the coming months”.
“What I would say is that when you look at when notices to quit are issued they don’t directly correlate…are not the exact number that go into homeless emergency accommodation, there’s movement within the market already,” he said.
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin said that because of a decision the Minister had made, in four weeks’ time “hundreds if not thousands of notices to quit will fall due”.
“There is a cliff edge in April, it will then extend to May and June,” he said. “I’m talking to people on the frontline in homeless services and they’re telling us there is no plan for April.”
The Dublin Mid-West TD asked Mr O’Brien what was he going to do in six or 12 months’ time and what was going to happen to local authorities and emergency frontline services when “the hundreds, if not thousands of single people, couples, families with children and pensioners present for emergency accommodation and there is none because of the absence of a contingency plan”.
The Sinn Féin TD added that the minister had his “head buried deep in the sand” in relation to social housing targets.
Mr O’Brien said the Government had a responsibility to make sure it works towards a “functional private rental sector”. He said it had ramped up providing additional accommodation with over 5,000 social housing new builds delivered in the last quarter of 2022 and 1,800 in the first two months of this year.
The Government faced mounting pressure on Thursday over its decision to end the ban on evictions as Sinn Féin signalled plans to force a Dáil vote on the matter after the St Patrick’s Day recess.
A vote would bring renewed focus on any lingering divisions within the Government as some Coalition TDs continued to express concerns over the plan to phase out the moratorium on evictions from the end of the month. Cormac McQuinn have the full story here.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said last night there is a deficit of 250,000 homes in the country at present and accepted it will take a long time to resolve the State’s continuing housing shortage crisis.
Mr Varadkar told a meeting of the Fine Gael parliamentary party that 30,000 homes were built last year and another 35,000 are under construction in 2023. However, he said the overall deficit in terms of need was at a quarter of a million. Harry McGee reports.
