Hear, hear.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Hear, hear.
Sentiment score: 0.00
Hear, hear.
Sentiment score: 0.00
If you tried to create a housing crisis, you could not do a better job than this Government is doing. It has allowed investor funds to come in and purchase family homes - ordinary homes - from under the feet of families who need them. Big corporations and big multinationals are coming in to make money while families are looking for a roof over their heads and for their own homes. The Government has created a situation where house prices have increased by 50% in the last five years. We have record homelessness. We have sky-high rents that are outside the availability and affordability of the vast majority of people. Evictions and notices to quit are on the up. While that is happening, the Government has ripped supports from families, such as the tenant in situ scheme, which it has gutted and turned down to a trickle. It has scrapped the eviction ban, and it has not reached its own social and affordable housing targets. I met six families last week who have notices to quit. I am meeting one of them on Thursday. It was a couple who were a Waterford local radio station today, and I was asked to meet them. What am I to tell those families? When I meet them, they are absolutely in despair. There are no houses for them to rent and certainly not within their means. They are all corralled into the private rental sector, trying to get homes that do not exist. They have not a hope of getting a social house and they are facing homelessness. They are facing eviction. These are families with children. I have to say I do not believe that this Government really cares about them because the Minister must be meeting the same families. He has to be meeting the same families with the same experience and the same circumstances as the families I am meeting. They are under fierce pressure, and they have been watching on aghast as these investor funds come in, buy up homes and make huge profits. Now, to really add insult to injury, the Government is going to bring in a rip-off rent Bill that will force up rents even more. In Waterford, rents are going to go up by €4,000. The Minister needs to get a grip and start representing ordinary Irish people, workers and families and not the big investor funds and big landlords, which the Government is doing.
Sentiment score: -0.08