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Cabinet Committees

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 22 September 2020

Tuesday, 22 September 2020

Questions (4, 5, 6, 7)

Alan Kelly

Question:

4. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [23637/20]

View answer

Mary Lou McDonald

Question:

5. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [23927/20]

View answer

Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

6. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee that deals with housing will next meet. [22649/20]

View answer

Mick Barry

Question:

7. Deputy Mick Barry asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [25166/20]

View answer

Oral answers (7 contributions)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 4 to 7, inclusive, together.

The Cabinet committee on housing was established by the Government on 6 July 2020 to oversee effective implementation of the ambitious programme for Government commitments on housing and related issues.

The committee last met on 30 July and is next scheduled to meet on Monday, 28 September.

In addition to the meetings of the full Cabinet and of Cabinet committees, I have meetings with Ministers, including the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, on a regular basis to focus on particular issues.

The committee operates in accordance with established guidelines for Cabinet committees and substantive issues are referred to Government for discussion and approval.

Significant work is under way on each of the areas covered by the committee through Departments, Government agencies and a range of interdepartmental groups, which will be brought forward for discussion at the committee and Government.

Since Friday, the Labour Party has called for a ban on evictions and rent increases to be reinstated in Dublin after the move to level 3 restrictions. In July, we tabled an amendment to the Government's emergency renters Bill that would have given the Minister power for public health reasons to reintroduce protections for renters in the event of a second wave. This is an area I am familiar with as somebody who introduced restrictions on rent increases for a number of years.

Similar powers were granted in other Bills. It says everything about the Government's approach that renters seem to be at the bottom of the pile as far as it is concerned. We need emergency legislation. We need to have foresight on this. This will be a real issue. Debts will start to be crystallised. People will be out on the streets. We want a ban on evictions. We want the Government to do something on this quickly. The changes the Minister introduced will only give protection until January for those who can prove they have been financially impacted by a limited set of circumstances. It is quite a complicated process. I ask the Taoiseach to look at this. We need to protect these people. We cannot have people being thrown out during this time. I ask the Taoiseach to examine the circumstances affecting the legislation that was introduced and amend it. In effect, the Government can do it through that process.

The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government recently announced €40 million to refurbish 2,500 vacant properties, voids.

There are a significant number of properties, as I know from researching the matter, that have been left vacant for a considerable period of time. Why were they left vacant for so long? The target for social housing construction this year is 7,736 units, inclusive of housing provided by local authorities and approved housing bodies, under regeneration schemes and under the Part V provisions. What is the Taoiseach's projection as of today's date for how many council homes will be built? It was also proposed to buy 800 properties and lease 2,631 properties, for a total social housing target of 11,000 units. Will the Taoiseach give the House the updated figures in this regard as of today?

I want to raise again the issue of evictions and the urgent necessity for a ban on rent increases. I am sure all of us, as elected representatives, are very well aware of the kinds of pressures people are under in our communities. There is a very particular burden and pressure on those in the rental sector. Thousands of workers are now without employment. The reality for many people in Dublin, for example, is that they lost their shirt overnight. Whereas their household income has fallen, rents continue to rise, albeit now at a lower rate than before. Renters need the assurance that they will not be evicted and that the roof over their head is secure in these very uncertain times. We have fared better than some of our European neighbours in this crisis but the fall in Ireland's GDP is the sharpest on record. The Taoiseach will know that in terms of job losses, we come second only to Spain in the second quarter of this year. A terrifying prospect of unemployment rates of eye-watering proportions is before us.

The Taoiseach told us originally that the Government's argument for lifting the ban on evictions and rent increases was that the economy was opening up and the crisis was receding. That is clearly and manifestly not the case. The situation in Dublin is the most immediate evidence of that as it has moved to level 3 plus in terms of restrictions. There is the real possibility that many other counties could join the capital in the near future. The Taoiseach argued that he could not justify constitutionally a ban on evictions or rent increases because of the opening up of the economy and because the crisis had receded. The crisis has not gone anywhere and the Taoiseach's argument is a very flimsy and unacceptable excuse for not protecting people who rent from the prospect of eviction or a rent hike.

Unless the Taoiseach reinstates the eviction ban, he will be throwing thousands of renters to the wolves in the worst of all possible circumstances. We opposed the Government's decision to lift the eviction ban, which had been very successful, as we said it would be, in reducing the numbers going into homelessness. In removing that ban, the Taoiseach betrayed his previous support for the anti-evictions Bill my colleagues and I introduced in the last Dáil and, in so doing, performed one of the first U-turns of this Government. Whatever about all that, in the current circumstances, where people's pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, is being cut, new restrictions are being imposed and fewer people are going to have the income necessary to pay rents, the possibility of people being made homeless is simply unacceptable. It is totally incompatible with protecting public health in the context of Covid-19. The Taoiseach must reinstate the eviction ban. Anything else would be utterly irresponsible and unjust.

It is an ominous combination to have both the incidence of Covid-19 and the number of evictions on the rise at the same time. We know Covid infection rates are on the rise and we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that evictions are increasing. Next week, the official figures for the numbers in emergency accommodation at the end of August will be announced. I expect those figures to confirm that evictions are on the rise, possibly in a dramatic fashion.

The Government weakened the anti-eviction legislation. No amount of bluster will hide that fact. At the end of July, in the Dáil, the anti-eviction provisions were weakened, with effect from 1 August. A ban remains for those who face eviction because they were in arrears that are directly related to the Covid crisis. That certainly is the case. However, evictions are now allowed on grounds of sale of property, refurbishment of property or to allow a relative to move in. In other words, they are allowed on grounds which Threshold tell us are the majority reasons for evictions in this State. The prospect is opening up of people having to traipse around to find accommodation in our towns and cities in the middle of a pandemic and at a time when the incidence of the virus is on the rise. That cannot be allowed.

The change in July was justified on the basis that a retention of the existing provisions would not be on sound legal ground. The Taoiseach said earlier today in the House that this is a fact. It is not a fact; it is an opinion. It is the opinion of the Attorney General but it is one which is becoming weaker by the hour as infection rates rise. Has the Taoiseach asked the Attorney General whether the latter still thinks there are legal grounds for weakening the ban and not reinstating it? Clearly, the case for reinstating the ban immediately on public health grounds is overwhelming and unanswerable.

I will use the short time remaining to give the Taoiseach an example of what is happening. This morning, I was present at a threatened eviction to assist the tenant. This woman is a taxi driver who has lost her income as a consequence of the Covid restrictions. This loss of income is the underlying reason that the landlord wants her gone. However, the reason the latter gave in the eviction notice - which was inadequate, and that is why the landlord is now saying, after people protested, that it was a misunderstanding - was not that she is unable to pay the rent due to a loss of income but because the landlord wants to move a relative in. This proves the point that unless the eviction ban is reinstated, people like this woman and her family will be threatened.

The legislation the Government has introduced applies until January and it protects tenants who are in difficulty because of the Covid-19 crisis in terms of income and so on. It protects them from rent increases and eviction. It is a more specific Bill than that which preceded it. The reason the blanket ban could not be continued is that, fundamentally, it was unconstitutional. We were no longer at the time and are no longer now in a lockdown situation. Dublin is not in lockdown. Level 3 is not lockdown. All sectors are open, bar the hospitality area generally and some areas of arts, culture and entertainment. Manufacturing is open, retail is open and construction is open. Significant sectors of the economy are still operating in Dublin.

We hope it does not happen but if we were to move to level 4 and level 5, one would have to consider what additional measures one could bring in to support people in situations like the Deputies have described. For now, the advice is very clear in respect of level 3. The Minister is of the view, in accordance with the legal advice, that level 3 does not merit the reintroduction of the blanket ban that was there for some months during the lockdown and all that went with the lockdown in terms of restricted mobility throughout the entire country. There is a significant difference between the two. Of that there is no doubt and it must be accepted.

Regarding Deputy Kelly's question on voids, the Government has only been in office for three months, give or take a week or two, but we have taken the initiative in this regard. It is the case that for some time there have been a number of empty houses and homes that were not refurbished quickly enough. I made that point to the new Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government and the Secretary General of the Department that local authorities need to move quickly when houses are vacated to get them back into operation without delay.

The length of time it can take to get a house that has been vacated back up and running with a new family or person in it is ridiculous. We all hear anecdotally of cases where all the furniture in a house is taken out and it is boarded up. That is not acceptable in a housing crisis where people are desperately looking for houses. The Minister with responsibility for housing and I took the initiative to provide substantial moneys from the July stimulus to get voids back in use quickly. Some 2,500 voids will be delivered back into the housing stock as a result of that initiative, which was taken weeks after the Government was formed with a view to doing something concrete about voids quickly with the resources allocated to it. The Minister, with the local authorities, has put a lot of energy into trying to realise those particular targets.

I dealt with the issue Deputy McDonald raised on level 3 restrictions versus a lockdown. Even looking at the August return, one can see that, bar some specific sectors, significant sectors of the economy have come back fairly strongly since the reopening. We suffered a lot with construction unemployment and other areas because of the severity of our lockdown in March and April. A number of articles have been written on that but, nonetheless, that lockdown had the effect of suppressing the virus so one must look at this in the longer term.

The same point I articulated on the legislation we have brought in applies to the question put by Deputy Boyd Barrett. As I said, the Minister is examining what additional targeted measures may be required in the event that an area is subject to level 4 or level 5 restrictions in line with Resilience and Recovery 2020-2021: Plan for Living with Covid-19 and we will continue to examine that.

On homelessness, the Minister has been very committed from the get-go to working with the various non-governmental organisations involved in homelessness, providing supports to those who intervene in homelessness to get the figures down, create additional accommodation in emergency accommodation in particular and keep downward pressure on homelessness as much as we possibly can. That is continuing across a range of initiatives the Minster has taken on a short-term, medium-term and long-term basis, with a view to getting additional capacity for emergency accommodation in the short term.

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