I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. I completely support what is set out in it. It is deeply frustrating and disappointing to engage in this debate again and see the absolute lack of concern on the Government's part. I will come back to this. I remember, when I was engaged in campaigning against the lifting of the eviction ban after Covid, describing the Government at the time as being one of the cruellest Governments we have had since the foundation of the State. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael today have managed to outdo that. The level of acceptance of evictions is mind-blowing for me. It is just batted away that 7,000 households have been evicted during the first quarter of this year. The Taoiseach earlier today referred to it as "churn", which revealed what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael think of these households. They are just "churn"; they do not really matter. I think that what we are seeing today in our housing crisis will actually be the end of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We are looking at the point at which Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael completely abandoned any pretence at standing up for ordinary people. Fine Gael was always clear about who it stood for but Fianna Fáil in particular has completely abandoned working people - ordinary people in this country. When people look back and study this period of time, the comparison with the Famine will be made. I have said for quite a while that we have now reached the point where evictions are as high as they were during the Famine. The Minister of State can shake his head but it is the truth.

Sentiment score: -0.05

I am.

Sentiment score: 0.00

What is unbelievable is 7,000 households being evicted in the first quarter of this year and not an eyelid batted or an intervention made on the part of the Government. I have looked at it historically. The figures are there. A total of 100,000 households were evicted between 1846 and 1852. This equates to between 15,000 to 16,000 households a year. How many households were evicted last year? The answer is 20,000 households. Not only are we at the highest rate of evictions since the Famine, we have surpassed it. The rate of evictions today is higher than during the Famine and that was when we were under a colonial government. This is our own Government. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are standing over evictions that are greater than those that took place during the Famine. These are families and children. I knocked on the doors of two houses that were side by side in Cabra today. One woman was in tears because she is being evicted with nowhere to go. She is an elderly woman who has cancer and says there is nowhere she can go. The house next door is overcrowded. It is absolutely disgraceful and shameful. This Government is one of the cruellest and most callous Governments we have had since the foundation of the State. It is incredible that Micheál Martin and the Tánaiste get up here and talk about churn and evictions as if real human beings are not behind them. It is disgraceful. The other side of this is the reason house prices and rents are so high. House prices and rents are so high because what is going on in the midst of this housing disaster is massive profiteering by developers and investor funds facilitated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Last year, the head of Glenveigh, one of Ireland's biggest developers, made €3.5 million in his pay plus bonuses. The head of IRES REIT made over €1 million. If we look at IRES REIT, we can see that up to half of all rent that is being paid is going directly into profit. What is very clear is that while people are suffering as a result of this housing crisis, there are others - the ones the Government is facilitating and funding - who are actually profiting from it at unprecedented levels. Tens of millions are being made by these companies and this is what we need to reveal. It is the price gouging and profit gouging by the developers and investor funds facilitated by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that is the reason people are literally being screwed on to the streets of this country because they cannot afford a home and it is utterly disgraceful. We brought forward a developer transparency profits Bill but, of course, the Government would not put it through because it does not actually want accountability for the developers and investor funds it is throwing hundreds of millions at. In Galway city, rents were €800 a month in November 2019. They are now €2,500 a month. Rents have gone through the roof. It is similar in Dublin. I can see it in my constituency. What does this Government do? It allowed rents to rise even further, breaking commitments. One of the commitments the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach made very clear was that no existing tenants would be affected by the new rules. Talk to the tenants of IRES REIT, which is our biggest landlord. They are being told in rent share situations that they cannot replace the tenant who leaves, leaving the existing tenant paying the full rent and that tenant, of course, is facing a situation where they will not be able to stay. That tenant will leave and it will be recorded as voluntary when it is not and IRES REIT can charge market rent to the new tenants bypassing the Government's rules, which said that with no-fault eviction, the landlord cannot increase the rent to market rent. What is the Minister doing? I wrote to the Minister about it last week but nothing has been done about it and nobody has said anything. IRES REIT is literally forcing tenants out, so it can get higher rents and bypass the Government's rules and there is silence from the Government. The Government has no problem with that. It is incredible. I return to the issue of evictions, the Famine and homelessness, and I will repeat it again and again. For us in the Social Democrats and for me, it is absolutely disgraceful and shameful that we are allowing higher levels of evictions than took place during the Famine and not only are we standing over it, we are facilitating it with new rental rules that incentivise landlords to evict. The Minister of State has been around and understands what is going on. How does he accept families and children being torn away from their communities and literally crying themselves to sleep? That is what people are telling us. Mothers and fathers are literally crying themselves to sleep because they do not know where they are going to go. I cannot get my head around why the Government does not put in place a ban on no-fault evictions. The Tánaiste and Taoiseach stand up here and say they care about this country and that there is no monopoly on who has compassion in this Dáil but there is a complete absence of compassion from Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach, and I will name it. It is absolutely shameful. It is shameful that the Taoiseach of this country comes in here and says higher evictions than the Famine are just churn but it gets even worse. What have the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste done in the past few months? They have started to turn the attention onto immigrants and blame immigrants for the housing crisis but it is not really surprising when we look at the Taoiseach's mentor, Bertie Ahern, and what he said at the doors - that nasty comment. It just revealed how politically callous Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are. The shift involves the most privileged people in this country turning around and because of their failures, blaming the most vulnerable people in this country who have fled here seeking refuge and who are working in our nursing homes and care homes. It is really disgusting to see the Taoiseach stand up here when homelessness is raised with him and say homelessness is complicated and is not the same as it was. What is it Micheál? What is different about it? What is different about the families in emergency accommodation now compared to five years ago? Of course, what he is saying is that it is because there are immigrants here. They are not Irish citizens. Would he say the same to the Irish people in England who cannot afford to pay their rent or who are evicted? Should they not be entitled to emergency accommodation? The people who are in homelessness and in emergency accommodation in this country are homeless. They are without homes. They have been evicted - predominantly from the private rental sector - but instead what do we see from Fianna Fáil? It does everything to take attention and blame off itself. It is deeply saddening and frustrating that we have a Government that stands over the highest level of evictions since the Famine and acts as if this is okay and tolerable. I heard the Taoiseach say again today, and the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins also said it, that while 7,000 households were evicted, new tenancies were created. There is no acknowledgement in those 7,000 evictions of the stress, the anxiety, the upset and the trauma those people and children are left with. I hope the Minister of State and his family never face eviction. I hope the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach never face it, but when do they ever have any sense of what it is to be forced out of their home and to lose it? It is one of the things that motivates me because I had to leave my home when I was a private renter as a child, and it has stayed with me for life. I will stand up for those people; they should not be evicted. The Government is a disgrace.

Sentiment score: -0.12