I also wish happy Christmas to all the staff, the Ceann Comhairle and the Ministers. Nollaig Shona. I look forward to continuing our engagement in the new year. I will refer to one case in particular in my constituency but I wish to raise the broader issue affecting people which we are being inundated about. It is the issue of people facing eviction. They are being evicted from the private rental sector. These are families and individuals. A policy brought in after the temporary Covid eviction ban was lifted was the tenant in situ scheme. Everyone acknowledges the tenant in situ scheme has been a very effective homeless prevention measure. The housing committee had very important presentations, which I hope the Minister of State will look at, from Focus Ireland and the Dublin Region Homeless Executive this week. It showed the tenant in situ scheme was a really key measure in preventing homelessness in 2024. I will talk about one case which shows the necessity of this scheme. This is the case of a family which was facing eviction. My office has been dealing with the mother. They have had to leave their rental home and are living in the husband’s parents’ house. It is extremely overcrowded with seven people in the house. The eldest daughter sleeps on the couch in the living room. The two sons share a room with their grandmother. The other daughter shares a room with her grandfather. The woman, her husband and their baby sleep in another room. They have been looking for a home for quite a few years and had not found anything suitable before they received their notice to quit. They had contacted the council in April when they received the eviction letter to see if the tenant in situ scheme could support them but at that time the council said the scheme was effectively paused until there was clarity on it. As a result, they had to leave their home. The mother was in touch with us. She told us she cries every night. She has started taking antidepressants a week ago and she and her husband break up multiple times a day over arguments blaming one another about who is at fault that they got into this situation. She said she knows many people in the same situation and that they are all living this. She said she is grateful there is a roof over their heads but she will go to any length so her kids do not end up in a hotel with herself and her husband in the same room for an unknown amount of time where they are even more crowded than they are now. This is an example of the tenant in situ scheme failing to support those families as a result of it being paused. I have been in touch with the council since then. It says the scheme is being operated but there are eligibility requirements, so it is being restricted in terms of who is eligible for funding for it. Will the Minister of State address that and clarify the eligibility changes to the tenant in situ scheme? I am very concerned it is limiting its potential to prevent families like this from being made homeless. When the head of housing at Dublin City Council was at the housing committee this week where we discussed homelessness I asked him how the scheme was functioning. He said that while it was back functioning there are issues of eligibility and issues where repairs are required to a home that is currently rented privately and that is not up to standard because there is not funding there to do up those homes.

Sentiment score: 0.03

I want to highlight the issue and to really push the Minister of State on it. Could he take it back to the Minister as well? There needs to be a step-change in how this Government approaches the tenant in situ scheme. When we look at the funding that has been allocated, it is €22 million to enable the purchase of homes for those who are in long-term homelessness, but at €400,000 per home, that is only 55 homes. There are 422 families in Dublin in emergency accommodation for longer than two years. The funding is simply not adequate. For the allocation of €95 million, we are talking about maybe 250 homes. The figures might sound like a lot, but it is not sufficient or adequate when we look at it in terms of the number of homes that can be purchased. My concern is that thousands of households currently in receipt of the housing assistance payment are facing no-fault evictions, and that will continue even when the changes begin in March. We have a ticking time bomb that is actually exploding now in terms of the mass scale of evictions going on of HAP households that cannot afford the market rent. If they are evicted, there is nowhere they can afford to go. That is ongoing now. It is why we see so many presentations into homelessness but it is going to get even worse in the coming years. There must be more focus on the tenant in situ scheme to prevent households who are in receipt of HAP from going into homelessness. A lot more funding needs to go into it because landlords say they are willing to sell the property, but the councils are too slow in responding and the issues around eligibility and lack of clarity on funding have added to this problem. I call on the Government to take action, in particular on the issue of maintenance. Councils need to be given a green light so that if a family or an individual is facing eviction from their home, where they are in receipt of HAP, the council can buy the property regardless of what it costs ultimately. It is cheaper to keep people in their homes than for them to go into emergency accommodation.

Sentiment score: -0.13