I move:
That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 to ban evictions for the duration of the current housing emergency.
Incidentally, this is the third Bill that People Before Profit has introduced in an effort to ban evictions where people would end up homeless through no fault of their own. The first of these was introduced in 2018, another was introduced in 2020 and we sent this into Bills Office a couple of weeks ago. It was due to be debated in the Dáil and voted on next week.
Last time we brought such a Bill forward, it prompted the Government to introduce the Covid temporary emergency evictions ban, although it had railed against introducing such a ban up until it was forced to do so. Similarly, over months now we have sought to put maximum pressure on the Government to reintroduce a ban on evictions. Perhaps not coincidentally, the week before this Bill was due to be voted on in the Dáil, the Government yesterday introduced a temporary ban on evictions. Although we are glad that it did that, we still want to have this Bill on the Order Paper. It is not clear to us that what the Government is planning to introduce will be sufficient to deal with the blight of evictions into homelessness, which has resulted in nearly 11,000 families, households and individuals being in the appalling situation of being homeless, in emergency accommodation and often in the most dreadful of circumstances. In most cases, it is because landlords are selling up.
Importantly, this will be a test of the Government’s proposed temporary ban. In some cases, as has been said on many occasions in this House over recent months, the cost-of-living crisis literally means that people are making choices between paying the rent and paying the bills, and having the money to put food on the table for their children. Our Bill is clear that where people are in financial difficulty - not wilfully not paying – as a result of a cost-of-living crisis that is spiralling out of control, they should be protected if they fall into arrears simply because of the extraordinary, unprecedented pressures of the cost of living, including food and energy prices, which are crucifying so many low- and middle-income households. It would be interesting to see what the Government does on that.
Our Bill proposes that such an eviction ban would last for a year.
The Minister would then have the power to extend that, depending on whether the Government had actually addressed the housing crisis, the unaffordability of rents, the lack of social and affordable housing, the numbers of people in emergency homeless accommodation and, indeed, the cost-of-living crisis which is also fuelling the housing crisis. Now that the Government has been forced to move, we will keep the Bill in waiting, but we will bring it to a vote if the Government fails to deliver the solutions necessary to prevent the blight of homelessness and evictions into homelessness and address the deeper underlying issues of homelessness and evictions.
The Ministers and so on should take heed of the example of Jennifer, with whose case I am dealing and who featured on a news programme yesterday, or of Graham and Patricia King, whose case I brought to public attention in the Dáil a few weeks ago. They should take heed of the example of a couple in Blackrock with whom I am currently dealing. The couple are now overholding and are being evicted from a house in which they have lived since the 1950s with their kids. They were terrified at the prospect of being evicted. They and all the other thousands of people who face evictions need to be protected by the Government. We need sustainable, secure and long-term solutions in terms of social and affordable housing. If the Government does not deliver on that, we will have no choice but to push for the Bill to be voted on in the Dáil.
