2026-06-11

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." On 19 May this year, the Government approved the publication of the Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026. This Bill is structured in three Parts, the two substantive elements being Part 2 and Part 3, which deal with amendments to the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 around eligibility for social housing, and the second, Part 3, which introduces a number of technical amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. The publication of the Bill follows pre-legislative scrutiny by the Oireachtas committee on housing of the general scheme of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill in early 2024. I thank the committee for its work. Part 2 inserts two new sections into the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009. The first inserts a new section 20A that puts on a statutory footing residency requirements for social housing eligibility. The second inserts a new section 20B that provides for a new statutory appeals process for decisions relating to eligibility for social housing, including those relating to residency. Both of these legislative changes are founded on the Government’s objective to ensure a robust legislative framework and a consistent and standardised approach across the local authority sector to eligibility for social housing. There is currently no provision in the housing Acts requiring residency as an eligibility criteria for social housing support. The policy and guidance on this matter are provided in Department Circular 41/2012. This Bill will put these eligibility requirements for accessing social housing supports on a statutory footing by amending the relevant provisions of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 consistent with the existing policy included in the relevant circular. The Bill introduces clear legal requirements that all applicants must be lawfully and habitually resident in the State. These legislative reforms are building on existing policy and procedures which, in the first instance, define social housing as a long-term housing support. Therefore, successful applicants must be in a position to demonstrate that they have a long-term entitlement to reside in the State, that is, their permission to reside here is not temporary or short term. Putting these requirements on a statutory footing ensures there is a robust statutory and regulatory framework in an area of increasing demand. Ultimately, these changes will provide legal certainty for applicants, decision makers and the courts. The Bill inserts a new section 20A into the 2009 Act. Section 20A prescribes clearly the specific residency requirements for Irish, UK, EU-EEA and non-EU-EEA nationals. These are grounded in existing policy and current decision-making in line with existing policy. These residency requirements are also consistent with our international obligations under various directives, EU treaties and related case law. As with existing policy, those who have applied for international protection but have yet to receive a decision; a person who has a deportation or a return order against them where the notification is in force; those with immigration permissions that do not permit them to access certain social and public services; and those on certain temporary permissions, for example, temporary protection, will not be eligible for housing support. The introduction of the new habitual residency requirement for all social housing applicants as a new eligibility criterion is consistent with the approach taken in social protection legislation and consistent with the policy objective that social housing is a long-term support. The measure will ensure social housing support recipients are resident in the State, have close links to the State, and have made Ireland their home. While demonstrating habitual residency is a new part of the application and assessment process, much, if not all, of the existing documentation required, such as proof of address, income and history of residency permission, will in most cases suffice. The introduction of the Bill is about ensuring we have a robust legislative framework, eliminating ambiguity and ensuring a statutory framework for the complex interaction of the immigration system and local authority social housing eligibility decision-making. The Bill also provides for the appeal of social housing assessment decisions by housing authority decision makers. This builds on, but makes more robust, existing local authority arrangements in this area. The new appeal provisions will provide an independent, accessible and fair appeals service for social housing applicants in a prompt manner without the necessity to establish a new entity or body and the associated governance and related complexities this would bring. These provisions have been drafted with input and advice from the Office of the Attorney General and with the experience of the applicant and the expertise of local authorities in mind. Part 3 of the Bill technically amends the Residential Tenancies Acts 2004 to 2026 to enhance their implementation and the outcomes thereunder, with greater efficiencies for stakeholders, including the Residential Tenancies Board and the courts. The key provisions of Part 3 include streamlining court enforcement of RTB determination orders and allowing members of An Garda Síochána and officers of a housing authority, if required, to provide evidence in certain RTB dispute resolution cases, such as anti-social behaviour cases. They also include empowering the RTB to issue 28-day fixed payment notices for certain offences to provide the opportunity for an offender to avoid prosecution and speed up compliance with the RTA, and clearly providing for public RTB hearings in the context of adjudication, tribunal and sanctioning cases. It is the intention of the Minister, Deputy Browne, to bring forward a number of Committee Stage amendments in relation to Part 2 of the Bill. These are technical amendments to take account of the enactment of the International Protection Act 2026 in a new section 20A, provisions on data and information sharing with the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Migration to support implementation of residency provisions in an amendment to section 55 of the Housing Act 2014, and amendments to certain sections of the Housing Act 1988 and the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009 relating to the provision of homeless services to be brought forward on Committee and Report Stages. As a result of the considerable changes in the nature of homelessness which have occurred since the Housing Act 1988 was enacted, in July 2025 the Government approved the preparation of legislative amendments relating to the provision of homeless services by local authorities. On Committee Stage, we will bring forward a requirement for Tusla to be included as a member of each of the nine regional joint homelessness consultative fora. We will also bring Report Stage amendments on the introduction of eligibility criteria for access to homeless services, the expansion of the circumstances in which the provision of emergency accommodation can be withdrawn, and the recognition of the best interests of the child. In line with amendments to eligibility for social housing support, lawful residency and habitual residency will be introduced as eligibility criteria for homelessness supports. The introduction of this amendment will ensure that the State is operating a harmonised and consistent approach to the provision of social entitlements in general. For a person deemed not eligible for homeless supports and services, a safety net service will allow local authorities to provide emergency accommodation to that person in strictly limited circumstances on a night-to-night basis. An amendment will also be brought forward to expand the circumstances in which local authorities can withdraw the provision of emergency accommodation. The proposed amendments to be brought forward on Report Stage will also introduce a mechanism of appeal against decisions made by local authorities in relation to the withdrawal of the provision of emergency accommodation. They will also introduce an obligation on local authorities to have regard to the best interests of the child when emergency accommodation is being provided to a person and a child who normally resides with them and a definition of what a child is. It is also the intention of the Minister, Deputy Browne, to bring forward a number of technical amendments to Part 3 of the Bill as it progresses through the Houses on Committee and Report Stages, including technical and consequential amendments to section 9. These will include extending the period from the date of an offence for the RTB to institute a prosecution and updating the references to the increases in the building energy rating required to qualify for an exemption from the rent increase restriction to reflect the new BER scale that came into force in May. They will also include providing that landlords must serve a notice of rent review or notice of termination on the RTB within seven days of the date on which the notice is served on the tenant rather than on the same day on which the notice is served on the tenant. The purpose of this is to facilitate compliance as the postal service may not deliver such notices to both the RTB and the tenant on the same day. There will also be clarity that a party appealing a decision of an RTB adjudication to an RTB tribunal must state the ground or grounds for the appeal. Provision will also be made for two warning notices to issue prior to any fixed payment notice, as referred to earlier, and potentially, for related payment procedures. There will also be provision that a detached auxiliary dwelling developed in accordance with exempted development, as per forthcoming amendments to the planning and development regulations, shall not be a tenancy for the purposes of the Residential Tenancies Acts. I will now outline the broad thrust of the Bill and I will focus specifically on the provisions. The Bill contains 50 sections. Sections 1 to 3, inclusive, contain standard provisions dealing with the short title, definitions, commencement, construction and collective citation of the Bill. Section 3 provides for the consequential repeal of sections 39A(3) and (4) of the Residential Tenancies Acts 2004 to 2026. The requirement on Residential Tenancies Board adjudicators and tribunals to have regard to any advices of the Money Advice and Budgeting Service in making determinations in relevant dispute cases will be more appropriately placed by this Bill as new sections 97(4A) and 104(8) of the Residential Tenancies Acts. Sections 4 to 6, inclusive, are technical amendments and consequential to other provisions. Section 7 provides amendment of section 20 of the 2009 Act and allows regulations to be made for the amendment to the eligibility criteria for social housing support. Section 8, on residency requirements and social housing appeals, amends the Act of 2009 by the insertion of section 20A after section 20. Section 20A(1) provides that a household shall not be eligible for social housing support unless at the time of carrying out the social housing assessment each member of the household is lawfully resident. Section 20A(2) provides that being lawfully resident in the State does not apply to a member of a household who is a child, within the meaning of the Children Act 2001. Section 20A(3) sets out the members of a household that shall be considered lawfully resident in the State for the purposes of social housing support. Section 20A(4) gives the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, with the consent of the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, the power to prescribe in regulations a class or classes of persons. It may include persons to whom permission as may be specified by the Minister, which is specified permission, has been given in accordance with the law of the State, to be or to remain in the State and, where considered appropriate, who have been lawfully resident for such period immediately preceding the specified permission. Section 20A(5) outlines the matters that the Minister shall consider when prescribing a class or class of persons under subsection (4). Section 20A(6) outlines class or classes of persons that the Minister shall not prescribe under subsection (4). Section 20A(7) provides for the five factors that the housing authority shall take into consideration when determining whether a member of a household is habitually resident in the State. Section 20A(8) provides for the conditions that apply to a person whose residency is based on the person availing of his or her right under SI 548 of 2015 European Communities (Free Movement of Persons) Regulations 2015. They are not entitled to social housing support for a period of at least three months immediately prior to the day of application. Section 20A(9) provides for conditions attached to persons under subsection (3)(i). Section 20A(10) provides for conditions attached to a connected family of persons under subsection (3)(1). Section 20A(11) outlines the persons that shall not be regarded as being habitually resident in the State for the purposes of social housing support and section 20A(12) contains standard provisions dealing with definitions. Section 20B is concerned with appeal procedures. This outlines that households may appeal a determination by a housing authority that the household is not qualified for social housing support on eligibility and need criteria or a particular form of social housing support is the appropriate form of such support for that household. Section 20B(1) provides that a household may appeal a determination by the housing authority when it is determined that a household is (a) not qualified for social housing support or (b) where a household, having previously been determined as qualified for support, is no longer qualified for such support or (c) that a particular form of social housing support is the appropriate form of such support for that household. Section 20B(2) provides that an appeal does not apply to a household in receipt of social housing support. Section 20B(3) provides that a social housing appeal in relation to (a) or (b) in subsection (1) shall be on one or more of the grounds in relation to eligibility specified in subsection (4) only and that (c) in subsection (1) shall be on one or more of the grounds in relation to the classification of housing need specified in subsection (5) only. Section 20B(4) provides for the grounds on which households may appeal a decision in relation to the eligibility criteria. Section 20B(5) provides the grounds on which a household may appeal a decision in relation to the classification of household need. Section 20B(6) provides that a social housing appeal shall be made to the chief executive of the housing authority concerned within 14 days of the notification to the household concerned. Section 20B(7) provides that an appeal shall be in writing and what grounds the appeal is under. Section 20B(8) states that the household may submit such information and documents as the household considers appropriate to support the appeal. Section 20B(9) states that on receipt by a housing authority of a social housing appeal, the chief executive of that authority shall appoint an officer or employee of the authority to decide the appeal. Section 20B(10) provides that an appeals officer shall be a person who did not make the determination concerned and is in a more senior position in the authority than the person who participated in the original decision-making. Section 20B(11) states that an appeals officer shall be independent in the performance of his or her functions under this section. Section 20B(12) provides that an appeal shall be decided upon within 28 days and shall confirm the determination of the social housing appeal concerned, vary the determination, or set aside the determination and, where the appeals officer considers it appropriate, replace it with an alternative determination. Section 20B(13) provides that an appeals officer shall consider all information provided by a household, the social housing appeal and any accompanying information provided in accordance with subsection (8). Other provisions in this section relate to the decision-making period. I am conscious of the time. I will move on to the transitional provisions in section 9 of the Bill, which aim to set out how local authorities deal with an application with the authority concerned but which has not yet determined the application; a review of an existing application from somebody already on the housing list where, immediately before the commencement of the relevant section, the authority has not yet concluded the review; and a summary under section 21 of the Act of 2009 where, immediately before the commencement of the section, the housing authority has not yet completed the summary. Subsections (2) to (5) of section 9 provide that the housing authority may give notice in writing that an applicant is required to complete and submit a prescribed form for the purposes of demonstrating that each member of the household satisfies the new provisions in relation to legal and habitual residency. Where a form is required, the householder shall submit the form within 21 days, and the housing authority may extend the period if it considers it appropriate. Provisions in section 9(6) provide that if a person is found guilty of an offence, a fine not exceeding €2,000 may be imposed. Section 9(7) provides that an offence under subsection (6) may be prosecuted by the housing authority that gave the notice concerned. Part 3 of the Bill, which contains sections 10 to 50, provides for technical amendments, as I outlined previously, in relation to providing greater efficiencies for all stakeholders who interact with the RTB provisions. I outlined some of those in my original contribution in relation to bringing about efficiencies, ensuring we have a fines mechanism in place, statutory timelines and ensuring that High Court orders in appeal cases can be implemented in a more efficient manner. I certainly hope all the measures contained in the Bill will be welcomed. I worked with some Members of the House during my time on the Oireachtas joint committee. I acknowledge the significant work the committee does in relation to this. I also thank my officials, who have done extensive work in relation to this legislation over a considerable time. I commend the Bill to the House.

I thank the Minister of State. I thank the officials from the Department of housing for the two very detailed briefings they gave us on Monday and Tuesday and for the follow-on assistance they have given us to try to get our heads around this complex legislation in a very short time. The central proposition of this Bill is twofold. One is to take the existing eligibility rules for people to access social housing support and put them on a statutory basis, while the other is to provide an appeals mechanism for people refused social housing support, those who have that support removed or in other circumstances. We are not opposed to that proposition as it has been presented. The Minister of State will, though, expect a “but” here. There are some concerns. I think it is important that the Minister and the Minister of State listen very carefully to the concerns they are going to hear here and from others outside the Chamber. As we move through the Committee, Report and Remaining Stages, it is important that these concerns are addressed either by way of further explanation or, where required, amendment. We were not given enough time to consider this Bill before we came here. It was published on Friday. We did get the briefings, but amendments had to be submitted yesterday and not today, which is not ideal. Therefore, I do hope that enough time will be given in what will probably be two committee sessions next week to address the concerns the Minister of State is going to hear today. These are not just our concerns. The Minister, the officials and my party have received extensive correspondence from the statutory authorities like the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, and from legal experts, often working on the front line for those most vulnerable in our society, including the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, Community Law and Mediation and the Mercy Law Resource Centre. This is in addition to the Irish Homeless Policy Group. Its member agencies are made up of people who provide homeless services, as well as Threshold. I urge the Minister, Deputy Browne, not just to respond to the concerns but to meet those organisations, as I understand he has been requested to do following the National Homeless Action Committee meeting this week. I refer in particular to those organisations that have the legal expertise to tease out some of the complexities of the interaction of immigration and housing law to ensure that nobody who should have an entitlement to social housing is wrongly denied it following the commencement of this legislation. I also urge the Minister to work with us. The amendments we have all tabled have been made in good faith. Therefore, even when the technical drafting of our amendments might not meet the high standards of the Department, if the intention is right, I ask it to work with us over the next six weeks to get those corrected. The key test for Sinn Féin throughout this process will be a simple proposition. Nobody who today has an entitlement to access social housing support, all other things being equal, should be denied access to social housing support following the passage and commencement of this Bill. Nobody who is currently in social housing support or on a county council waiting list should have that removed, all things being equal, arising from the passage of this legislation. That is the bottom line for us. My understanding is that is the intention of this Bill and therefore we will work constructively with the Minister on it. We also need to ensure that the appeals mechanism, which I will talk to in some detail, is got right, and that the changes to the Residential Tenancies Act strengthen tenants’ rights and do not undermine them. I have a concern. We have eight pages of ministerial amendments. They were published late last night and, again, there is very little time to scrutinise them. Some of the most potentially problematic ministerial amendments have yet to be published, in particular the proposed amendments to section 10 of the Housing Act 1988 dealing with the provision of emergency accommodation. That was not included in the pre-legislative scrutiny. It has not received adequate attention from external bodies and, again, that is something we are going to need adequate time to address. What are the principal concerns we have? The first relates to section 20A and the application of habitual residency conditions in the State to accessing social housing support. I have no issue with that at all. That is the current practice, effectively. While it is not framed in that way, people have to be legally and habitually resident in the State and, indeed, in the functional area of their local authority to access social housing support. That is not in dispute. There is, however, a lack of clarity on the text of proposed section 20A(1), whereby all members of the household have to be legally and habitually resident in the State, and on how the section interacts with sections 20A(2), 20A(3), 20A(8) and 20A(10). These are exceptionally technical. In fairness to the officials, when they gave us their detailed briefing they themselves expressed the challenge in drafting those sections. The greater the level of clarity on this fundamental question as we progress with this legislation, the better. The reason I am saying that is the core principle that you cannot have a situation where the lead applicant fulfils the conditions set out in section 20A(1), and is legally and habitually resident, while children, dependant adults or connected individuals fall foul of them. From my discussions with the officials, that is not the intention for how those sections should interact, but greater clarity from the Minister on the record would be helpful in this regard. We also need to ensure that the impact of the changes on very vulnerable groups is adequately dealt with. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has made this a significant element of its correspondence with the Minister and ourselves. People fleeing domestic violence or those subject to human trafficking, for example, must be adequately dealt with, if not here or in our emergency accommodation system, then clearly somewhere else. This must not be palmed off to another Department in the hope that it will do something about it in the future. The second area I will talk about relates to section 20B. I believe the Minister has got it wrong. An appeals mechanism is eminently sensible but the idea of having a designated individual making appeals in all 31-odd local authorities is the wrong way to do things. That is not the way it has worked for our social welfare system and, therefore, there is a very strong argument to rethink this and locate the appeals office in the Housing Agency, for a number of very simple reasons. One is to assure full independence. I am not at all suggesting that more senior officials in the council cannot, under certain circumstances, overturn the decisions of officials at grade 4 or 5, but we have an independent social welfare appeals office for a reason and that principle should translate through here too. The second point is that the cases are going to be incredibly complex. There is not going to be a huge number but they will be at a level of complexity, as the Minister of State’s officials have expressed to us, in understanding the interaction of immigration, EU freedom of movement law and housing policy. Therefore, to build up a body of expertise to ensure good-quality decisions that are made consistently, it makes more sense to have a single place where an individual or individuals can build up expertise over time. Many of us are in and out of our local authorities regularly. They have huge constraints on time, recruitment and retention in their housing sections. I suspect that if it were asked to give an honest answer, the County and City Management Association would be more than happy for the office to be located somewhere else so local authorities could get on with the job of meeting people’s housing needs. What appears to be a restriction on the provision of new information in the appeals process makes no sense. In fact, if you look at the Residential Tenancies Board and appeals to its tribunals, for example, one of the conditions of lodging an appeal is you are meant to bring new information that might have a bearing on the case, similar to social welfare appeals. It appears from my reading of the text of the legislation that new information would not be admissible. That would be a mistake. If I am wrong, it should be clarified. Therefore, I urge that this be looked at between now and Report Stage. It would not require significant textual change but we would be better for it. The changes to the Residential Tenancies Act are broadly positive and I welcome all of those that extend tenants’ rights. However, there are a couple of problems. On section 17, the slip rule should not be applicable to statutory declarations. Statutory declarations are documents of legal standing. There is an absolute obligation on the signatory and the solicitor in question to make sure they are right. There is no definition of what the criterion for a slip rule is. Is it the date? Is it the signature? Is it the name of the landlord or his or her agent? Those things are fundamentally important to the legal integrity of a statutory declaration. This is a section we will be strongly opposing. I urge the Minister of State to change the notice period for RTB hearings back to 28 days from the ten or 11 days in section 30. The shorter period makes no sense and does not really speed up the process. That is not the primary delay. Giving a working person, particularly a single parent with a job and child, ten or 11 days to organise childcare, get time off work, etc., presents an exceptional difficulty. We have all dealt with cases where people, in advance of a tribunal hearing date, appealed to the RTB to delay that because they had very legitimate grounds for not being able to attend. That is being denied. Therefore, people need the maximum amount of time to make the arrangements to attend hearings because, as we know, when they cannot attend it is materially detrimental to them arguing their case. I do not understand the need for the transitional provisions. We probably did not get as much time to discuss those with the officials at the briefing because we were focusing on sections 20A and 20B. I do not understand why we cannot continue with the regime that exists and then, when the section in question is fully enacted, have the new rules apply. The reason I am saying that is because, if I take the Minister of State at his word, there is actually no change to the rules. From the current regime to the new regime, the rules stay the same. The statutory underpinning of those rules is fundamentally different but local authorities should be making the same kinds of decisions based on the same policy criteria. Why, therefore, do we need complicated transitional mechanisms? This is going to be tricky enough, and adding in a third layer of complexity makes no sense. When we go through the sections of the Bill on Committee Stage, I will invite the Minister to explain the rationale for them. If they are needed, I will be more than happy to revise my opinion, but right now I do not see any set of circumstances where they would be required. I will to talk about a couple of areas that are not in the Bill but should be, and then I will talk about the as yet unseen Committee Stage and Report Stage amendments before making my concluding remarks. The first is the long-standing issue of a social housing passport. We all know in our constituencies that there are people whose life circumstances change when on a local authority housing waiting list or in receipt of a social housing support such as the housing assistance payment, HAP. They might get a job in another local authority area or their children might need to attend specialist education or healthcare in another local authority area. They might have entered into a new relationship. Our current system punishes those people. If somebody in Dublin who is waiting for nine years on the local authority housing waiting list, or who is in receipt of HAP or rent supplement, gets a job offer in Cork that allows them to advance their career, they have to make a decision. Do they throw away their nine years on the list in Dublin, or do they move to Cork and take their the time on the list with them, which is not allowed? This is absolutely the correct place for this issue to be addressed. It was in Deputy Alan Kelly’s housing plan, rightly, but never implemented. It was in Simon Coveney’s housing plan, rightly, but never implemented. It was in the plan of former Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O’Brien. It is not in the current programme for Government. My understanding is that it is not necessarily a case of opposition at political level but that the County and City Management Association is concerned about the level of administration involved in allowing people to move around the country. Of course, a social housing passport should set very strict criteria if people need to move for work, education, relationship reasons or healthcare reasons. I am aware that the local authorities are working with the Department on the protocol to address this issue with respect to domestic violence, and that is positive. This would be the ideal place to deal with that fundamental inequity in our housing system. This is relevant to habitual residency because ultimately people are moving their core centre of interest. I have an amendment tabled on this. I am sure the hard-working officials in the Department could do a much better job than me between now and Report Stage. The Minister of State knows my proposal will make sense. He should please talk to his colleagues and see whether it can be accepted. The other issue, which I am sure gets cross-party support from the Opposition and the Government, relates to returning Irish migrants, particularly those who have been abroad for very long periods of time and would find it exceptionally difficult to meet the habitual residency test on return. Think of people who have lived in London for 30 or 40 years. Perhaps they got married and had children and a home. Perhaps their life circumstances then change and they want to spend the autumn years of their lives back where they are from but their families no longer live there. They no longer work there. Their pension entitlements come from the jurisdiction in which they lived for 30 or 40 years. There are many cases where those people find it challenging to meet the habitual residency condition or the local condition as it stands. I am sure the Minister of State and the Minister would by sympathetic to making sure that is not the case. There could be a legislative amendment or guidance alongside this Bill. However, we need to ensure that the habitual residency condition, which must apply to everybody equally and cannot have exemptions or opt-outs, does not act as a barrier to Irish people returning home to spend the final decades or years of their lives where they grew up and want to spend that time. I want to talk about section 10. I am concerned that we are not getting to see these amendments on Committee Stage next week and the week after. I appreciate there are technical drafting issues. I would, therefore, urge that we get a briefing on those amendments as soon as they are ready to be published and get adequate time on Report and Final Stages to deal with them. The Minister of State has explained the safety net. That was one of my questions and I am happy with that. However, here is one of the challenges. I could be somebody who has an entitlement to access emergency accommodation but a local authority makes the wrong decision. I could be completely entitled under this Bill and the decision could still be wrong. Not only would I be denied access to emergency accommodation and left sleeping on the streets, but I would not have the right to appeal. I understand that the local authorities are concerned that if there is a right to appeal a refusal of accommodation, it would create a challenge about ending that emergency accommodation. However, if we have already provided a safety net for those people who do not have reckonable residency, surely we have to provide something similar. We deal with cases all the time. I had an email from a gentleman in Wexford who was denied access to emergency accommodation on the absolutely illegal grounds that he did not have an entitlement to social housing support. As officials will say if asked, there is no relationship between an entitlement to social housing support under the 2010 Act and access to emergency accommodation under the 1988 Act. There is no issue whatsoever. That is a case where an individual has been denied access to emergency accommodation where he and his two children have an entitlement to it. Under this regime, there is no right to appeal and no safety net. That is fundamentally unfair and unjust. I appeal to the Government to reconsider that. Correspondence from the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, and others has raised issues about vulnerable groups, particularly those who have been human trafficked, that must be addressed to our satisfaction either here or elsewhere. The Bill is going to need significant written guidance and support for local authorities to ensure consistency of decision-making. It is also going to require close monitoring by the Department and an annual review with reporting to the Oireachtas housing committee to ensure that what the Minister is saying he wants to do - and I am taking his word in good faith - is what will happen. We can have all the discussion we want about the rules underpinning social housing support. However, if the Government is not supplying a sufficient volume of social homes, far too many people will wait far too long. The summary of social housing needs assessment was published last week. It is an important document. It shows a marginal increase in the number of households on local authority waiting lists but also shows that gross social housing need is declining as the number of people in the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, continues to decline. If you do an analysis of the flows in and out of the list for HAP, it would take, on the basis of the delivery of social housing, new builds, acquisitions and leasing in the past three or four years, at least 55 years to meet current and emerging social housing need, all things being equal. Whatever about the political weight we have in this Chamber, that tells us that the current delivery and the targets for the coming years, even if they are met, will not come anywhere close to reducing the length of time people are waiting. People should not be waiting nine, ten, 12, 14 years or more for social housing. That is the reality in many counties across the State. There needs to be an honest assessment by the Government based on the data provided by the Housing Agency in the summary of social housing needs assessment of how long it will take to bring down the waiting lists and to ensure that people have access to adequate homes. The Minister for housing is on the front page of today's Irish Examiner saying it is all about supply. That is not the right answer. It must be the right kind of supply in the right place and at the right price to meet people's needs. This is one of those occasions, certainly from my party's point of view, when there is not a deep division between what the Government is saying it wants to do and what we can live with. The Government needs to listen carefully to what we are saying, and to what the organisations, homeless services, legal services, NGOs and statutory bodies are saying. It needs to work with us on Committee and Report Stages to ensure that nobody who today has access to social housing support will be denied it, all things being equal, on the other side of the Bill; that the appeals mechanism is fit for purpose and makes good decisions in a consistent manner based on correct interpretation of the law; that the Residential Tenancies Act changes do not in any way undermine tenants' rights; and, crucially, ensures that nobody who has an entitlement to emergency accommodation will be denied it in the future or, worse still, is denied any meaningful opportunity to appeal a decision that could be incorrect in law and detrimental to their well-being or that of their children. I take the Minister of State at his word that he will work with us. The proof will be in the pudding and we will see him in committee next week to put that pudding to the test.

The Minister of State is probably well aware of the significant concerns of a number of rights-based organisations working directly on housing on the front line, including the statutory body, IHREC, and others. I will outline what they have highlighted as some of the significant concerns about this Bill. I was not a Deputy during the previous Dáil term when this legislation went to the housing committee. I am looking at it from the perspective of someone who is coming new to these particular proposals. Stepping back and looking at it, I have serious questions. I asked the officials at the briefing what was the rationale for the introduction of these measures now. I would also ask what the rush is. We should give it the time it needs because there are serious concerns about it. Is there a reason the Minister for housing is not here? Is he otherwise engaged? I would have thought, given the significance of this legislation, which makes the biggest change to homeless legislation since the enactment of the 1988 legislation, that the Minister for housing would be here to explain why he is introducing these changes, completely separate from what had gone through pre-legislative scrutiny. My deep concern is that the changes around emergency accommodation are a knee-jerk reaction to try to somehow massage the figures for emergency accommodation. If that is not the case, why introduce it? If it is going to make no material change to the numbers, why is it being introduced? It is, of course, going to have an impact. Otherwise, the Government would not be introducing it. Therefore, it is clear that the Government is introducing a significant change to access to emergency accommodation in the middle of the worst homelessness crisis in this State. It is moving to remove access to homeless accommodation. Why is it doing that? It is doing it because it wants to reduce homelessness numbers to try to take the political heat out of the issue. Even worse is the alternative, which is that the Government is pandering to a rising anti-immigrant sentiment. I have serious political concerns that that is what this Bill is about. I am concerned that it is not actually about addressing housing or homelessness but is about being seen, just like the Minister for justice, to be engaged in performative acts of hardening a stance on immigration in order to pander to what we are seeing, which is rising anti-immigrant sentiment and rising racism. We saw the outcome of that in Belfast and we saw it in 2024 here. I have serious concern that the Government is not taking seriously the political impacts of introducing this, why it is introducing it and what messages it is sending out. This is not the start of this. The Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have been saying for months that homelessness is more complex and is linked to immigration. The Tánaiste, Deputy Simon Harris, said it himself that there are people in emergency accommodation who are not entitled to housing in this country. He said they do not have a right to housing here. Very clearly, this is being done in the context of that, to act on that to reduce the entitlements of access to emergency accommodation. What it is doing, and I will set out why, is making the most vulnerable people in this country, those who are homeless, pay for an absolute political failure to deal with a social and economic disaster of the housing crisis and homelessness. I am sure the Minister of State has seen that the organisations are calling for this to be paused. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission has written to the Minister, to the Minister of State and to the House this week asking for this to be paused. IHREC is the statutory human rights organisation in this country that the State is supposed to be abiding by. Is the Government going to ignore it? We also have the Irish Homeless Policy Group, which sets out very clearly its concerns. Whatever the Government thinks about listening or not listening to us, this is Focus Ireland, the Simon Communities of Ireland, Threshold, and the organisations that are working on the front line of homelessness. I will set out what the Irish Homeless Policy Group has written this week. It said that along with its key concerns with the proposed Bill, we also ask that members of the committee ensure that the proposed legislation does not in any way prevent access to emergency accommodation while matters relating to residency status are being adjudicated by local authorities. This includes Irish citizen households returning from abroad in crisis. The issue of how this legislation going to impact on returning Irish emigrants has also been raised. Focus Ireland, Threshold and the Simon Community are concerned that implementing this legislation could lead to an increase in rough sleeping and households being pushed into increasingly vulnerable situations. They say it is critical that families and individuals are provided with accommodation and supports while residency status is determined. The organisations working on the front line of homelessness are saying that this legislation could worsen homelessness. There needs to be a proper response to that to outline how this is not going to worsen homelessness. By that, we do not mean increasing numbers going into emergency accommodation. Of course, what happens if people are denied access to emergency accommodation is they are not counted as homeless. What we will see is a rise in hidden homelessness and in street homelessness - people sleeping in tents and on the streets as a result of these changes. Why would the Government do that? The organisations also outline something that has been mentioned already and that we would support, namely, the social housing appeals board. My understanding is that the previous housing committee recommended that the appeals board would not be within local authorities but would actually be an independent board. I ask the Minister of State to take on board that it is not best practice to develop an appeals mechanism. The appeals mechanism should be done through an organisation independent from local authorities. The Irish Homeless Policy Group and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, the Mercy Law Resource Centre all raise this issue of how these changes are going to impact on particularly vulnerable cohorts. They mention specifically victims of domestic violence and human trafficking and they highlight that the IHREC made a specific recommendation when this went through pre-legislative scrutiny. I am sure the Minister of State has that recommendation and is familiar with it but IHREC recommended that the "legislation should include exemptions from the habitual residence requirement for victims of trafficking and victims of domestic, sexual or gender-based violence." Again, I ask the Minister of State to include that as an amendment and to agree to that as a change because we cannot have a situation whereby we are introducing legislation that will mean that victims of trafficking, which we are obliged to support under international law we have signed up to, and victims of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence are going to be further marginalised, exposed and unsupported as a result of restricting access to social housing and emergency accommodation. It is absolutely essential that the Department and the Minister respond to that specific issue and outline how these changes are not going to result in this. IHREC also recommended that the legislation be amended to ensure that the five years' reckonable residency requirement does not apply specifically to the victims of trafficking in a manner that is contrary to the EU anti-trafficking directive. The other recommendation was that discretion be given to local authorities to provide social housing supports to these vulnerable cohorts. I have been working for a long time in the area of housing specifically and the right to housing, and one of the issues that has come up is the 1988 Act and issues around it. Indeed, I wrote a research report specifically on it when I was in Maynooth. One of the criticisms by the likes of the Mercy Law Resource Centre, the community law centre and those working directly with people trying to access emergency accommodation was that there was no actual requirement on local authorities to provide emergency accommodation and that local authorities were constantly trying to find reasons not to provide it. People who come to my constituency office, and I am sure the Minister of State has it as well, would often say the local authority asked them if there was some couch they could sleep on or if there were parents they could go to as there was no emergency accommodation available. Local authorities would also ask about this issue of local connection and would refuse people access to emergency accommodation, or try to find ways to refuse people access to emergency accommodation, in part because they simply do not have the emergency accommodation. The organisations also highlighted that discrimination was taking place against particular vulnerable groups, be they Travellers, Roma or migrants, by local authorities and that these organisations were constantly having to advocate. That is part of the work of the likes of the Mercy Law Resource Centre and in my own constituency, the northside community law centre, and Community Law and Mediation. They do a lot of that work trying to advocate on behalf of people to be able to access emergency accommodation. These organisations are deeply concerned that these changes are going to make it even harder for people and therefore we are going to see more people put into hidden homelessness. The Mercy Law Resource Centre highlighted in its letter this week - as did Deputy Ó Broin - our concern, along with the concern of those organisations at the speed in which the Government is pushing this through. I asked at the outset why the rush? What is the rush about this? Why are we not taking time to go through this, given the considerations? The Mercy Law Resource Centre and others have significant concerns that the urgency in pushing the Bill through fails to allow time to give it full consideration and to investigate any potential unintended consequences. The centre states it is striking that the Bill fails to give consideration again to the victims of trafficking who may have difficulty satisfying the new habitual residence test. Similarly, it argues that a person returning to Ireland in crisis may have difficulty proving habitual residence and that we need only look at the recent actions of immigration officials in other jurisdiction to see the impact this could have. It said those were merely two examples that jumped out to it from an initial reading of the Bill. The centre also outlined something that needs to be answered. IHREC has asked about this as well and it was also brought up in relation to the pre-legislative scrutiny. It is that the Bill may fail to comply with EU law, especially as it relates to the requirement that all members of a household must satisfy the habitual residence requirement. There is also the issue of EU nationals who are working here and the three-month period. The Irish Homeless Policy Group highlights a concern about the rights of EU workers, who are here with their families and children, to access services within the first three months. The group outlines – and I request an answer specifically on this – that this may be a contravention of EU Regulation No. 492/2011, contrary to the European Court of Justice, and that the fundamental rights of Irish and EU citizen children under Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union will be contravened by this Bill. This is set out in Directive 2004/38/EC, which sets out that EU worker households and their family members are specifically protected from the application of the rule that can otherwise bar access to state supports in the first three months of residence. They are also guaranteed equal treatment and non-discrimination under Articles 7 and 9. I ask that this be addressed. Before I move to the issue of the slip rule and the Residential Tenancies Act, I again express my deep concern about the way in which this Bill has been brought forward, the discussion of it, the framing of it and the adding in of the emergency accommodation restriction. The introduction of the best interests of the child should be positive and welcome. I have consistently made the point that children are quite invisible within homeless services and in the crisis of homelessness. We do not fully count how many children go through emergency accommodation and present as homeless, and we have not fundamentally accepted the deeply damaging impact on children of spending time in emergency accommodation. The Minister of State's party, Fine Gael, as well as Fianna Fáil, have stood over this homelessness crisis. We have now been at it for over 12 years, since 2014. It is galling to hear the Tánaiste in an interview talk about the housing crisis being an "emergency" and how he is so frustrated things just are not moving. Fine Gael has been in power for 15 years and homelessness has risen year after year and then the Minister of State gets up and talks about how the Government's big move on homelessness is to restrict access to emergency accommodation. It is not right. The Government's big action should be to introduce a ban on evictions to stop people being made homeless. Its priorities are all wrong. It is playing into a dangerous politics and it is deeply disappointing to see it being brought forward in this way, and cynical as well. I have significant concerns about the Residential Tenancies Act and the slip rule being applied to statutory declarations. This will also lead to a further increase in evictions and a reduction in the right of tenants to be to challenge illegal notices to quit. This should not be applied to statutory declarations. Similarly, the length of time required for notification of hearings is too short. Tenants need a longer period to prepare their information, book time off work and arrange childcare. It also raises the issue that it is always down to tenants to try to challenge illegal evictions and the idea that our rental systems and its tenant protections are based on tenants having to spend a huge amount of time contacting the RTB and presenting to it. What should be in place is much stronger legal protection for tenants from evictions and rent hikes, but of course the Government is unwilling to do that.

This Bill deals with access to social housing support. I am aware the rules outlined in it are already in place in my two local authorities, Galway City Council and Galway County Council. I want to talk about the impact of the housing crisis on the people of Galway. For the majority of people trying to access social housing support in Galway, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible. If you are homeless and present for emergency accommodation, you have to be put on a waiting list because emergency accommodation in Galway is full. It has been this way for years but the Government does nothing to offer additional supports to the local authorities to deal with this crisis. Notices to quit rose dramatically across the State in the first quarter of this year, with over 7,000 notices issued in that time. I have been told by Galway City Council it is dealing with 160 active, valid notices to quit. Many of these notices are due to the properties in question being sold. Local authorities should be able to take advantage of this by acquiring the properties through the tenant in situ scheme, which was a crucial piece of homeless prevention before funding for it was cut. Local authorities should have more flexibility when it comes to acquisitions, not less. This would be especially appropriate in an area like Galway where the communities served by two separate local authorities are very intertwined. Councils should be able to work together to meet the housing need of people facing homelessness. The two Galway councils are also extremely constrained when it comes to housing stock. We have seen commencements in 2025 and 2026 are on track to fall short of commencements in 2024. We need to be increasing these numbers year on year, not decreasing them. There are constraints not only on social housing stock but also on affordable private rented options, so families facing homelessness have no alternative places to rent. This is borne out in consecutive Locked Out reports, published by the Simon Community, which find again and again that there are no affordable private rented units in Galway and surrounding suburbs. It is also borne out in a recent report by a financial website. Its analysis showed Galway is the most unaffordable city in Ireland for renters when comparing average wages with average rents. We often talk about facts, figures and statistics but there are real people behind each and every one of those figures. I want to share some of these stories with the Minister of State. A woman I have met, whose story was published today by RTÉ, has been homeless with her two sons for two years. She initially struggled to access emergency accommodation due to the pressure on homeless services in Galway. She is now living in one room with her sons, and her oldest child is having a really difficult time, like any child in emergency accommodation would. He is now also struggling with night terrors, a condition his mother has advised runs in her family. The boy has been referred to consultants who have signed off on the council's medical form, advising that he needs his own bedroom for his own health and the well-being of his brother. His mother is now struggling to get this medical advice accepted. I have met other individuals who are homeless and have serious health concerns, which mean emergency accommodation is not a suitable option for them. The only other option the council can offer them at this point is either to stay in overcrowded accommodation with friends and families or to self-fund a hotel or bed and breakfast accommodation. If you cannot afford the rents in Galway, you certainly cannot afford a room in a bed and breakfast until suitable housing can be offered. Local authorities have to have more options available to them beyond the one-size-fits-all emergency accommodation, so they can also support those medically vulnerable people.

The Government narrative on this Bill is that it is largely a technical Bill that is going to put on a statutory footing what is already the practice in terms of eligibility criteria on residency and habitual residency for social housing. It is just technical and it is a tidying-up exercise, providing a little bit more efficiency for decisions of the RTB in the second instance. There is nothing to see here and nothing to be concerned about. That begs the question: why we are doing it? What is the rationale for this? As has been asked, why is the Minister doing it if we are not really doing much anyway, and why is there such a big rush to do it? That begs pretty serious questions. I have to ask that question in the context of what has happened up in the North this week because, sadly, I am afraid these things have become connected. We have a horrific attack taking place in Belfast, which should be utterly condemned. The perpetrator of that attack should be brought to justice. People are rightly horrified by what happened. Of course, our sympathy goes out to the victim of this terrible attack, but we have also seen how it has then resulted in horrific attacks on people who happen to be immigrants and people of colour in the North. Houses are being burnt out and vile, vicious racist attacks are taking place against people purely on the basis that they are deemed to be immigrants or people of colour who had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack. Horrific things happen all the time. As a lot of people have been highlighting, in the North we have horrific instances of violence against women where they are killed as a result of domestic violence. We have horrific instances of organised crime in this country where people are chopped up by criminals and so on. There is revulsion and horror but it does not generally lead to attacks on people who have nothing to do with that, and generalisations, but in the context of the North, it has fuelled racist pogroms against people of colour and migrants because the alleged perpetrator of that horrific assault was an immigrant. Certain political forces on the far right, who also coincidentally tend to be supporters of the Israeli regime, which I will just throw that in for good measure, who seem to get a lot of support online from the United States and Britain and so on for their targeting of immigrants and for whipping up hatred, fear and hostility and horrific, violent pogroms against immigrants. There is support from really vile political forces on the far right from those countries. How is that all connected to what we are discussing here? We have got to stand up against that. The Government, and political forces that have any sense of decency, should not in any way lean into narratives that suggest that because someone is an immigrant or a person of colour, somehow he or she is a threat or something to be feared or that he or she is a problem for our society. We must not in any way lean into a narrative that can lead to that sort of stuff. That is what the Government is doing. It is leaning into that stuff because the truth is we have a shortage of housing and a catastrophic housing crisis not because of immigrants coming into this country, but because of a Government that has failed for more than a decade to address the housing crisis and to deliver the social and affordable housing necessary to address it and to deal with the homelessness crisis that continues to escalate. The Government has leant into the narrative that somehow it is because there are too many people rather than it has not provided enough social and affordable housing or it has failed to take measures that would prevent people ending up homeless. That leads into the racist narrative being pushed by the far right, which ends in the sort of stuff we have seen in the past few weeks. There seems to be no apparent rationale for this because this is about rationing access to something there should not be a shortage of. That is essentially what this Bill is about. There should not be a shortage of housing. There should not be a shortage of social and affordable housing. There should not be homelessness, yet what this Bill is about is about rationing access to something that there should not be a shortage of because it should be a basic right. Of course, it is a handy way to deflect from the Government's own responsibility. The oldest trick in the book and in politics generally is, "Watch what my right hand is doing so you don't see what my left hand is doing." This week I tried to highlight the fact that Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is selling off land zoned for 1,000 homes on publicly owned land to private developers. Nobody is talking about that. It is an absolute scandal. On a site that is publicly owned, where we should have 100% social and affordable housing, we are only going to get 20% social and affordable housing because the Government has decided to sell it off and somebody is going to profiteer from it. That is why we have a housing crisis. The Government is looking after people who are profiteering from the inadequate supply of the most basic thing in the world - an affordable, secure roof over one's head. Even in this Bill, it is doing things to benefit landlords and to make it ever so slightly easier, for example, to evict people. Technical problems with termination notices will not longer be a reason to stop an eviction. It will be just a little easier for landlords to evict people when they should not be allowed to evict people at all in the midst of a homelessness crisis. The Government claims that nobody is going to be excluded from social housing eligibility who was previously eligible for it but, in actuality, as multiple organisations, including Mercy Law, IHREC and so on, are saying, the Bill may well result in that. In any event, there is a performative element to it because what it is saying is there is a problem we need to tighten up on here, suggesting that people who are not eligible and do not have a right to social housing might be getting it, so we have to tighten it up. That certainly is not happening. Asylum seekers are not being housed in social housing. It is not happening but there is an implication that maybe it is and therefore we have to tighten it up. The consequence may be that vulnerable people will be excluded from emergency accommodation or even potentially from eligibility for social housing because one person in the household does not quite meet the criteria, even though everybody else has met the criteria such as children, including vulnerable children, people who are victims of human trafficking and so on may be deemed ineligible. As I understand it, the Government is going to table amendments on the next Stage, which could mean the eligibility thresholds required for social housing could then be applied to access to emergency accommodation. Where are the people who are deemed ineligible or cannot gain access to emergency accommodation going to go? They are going to end up on the streets homeless. The Government has achieved a performative act of pointing the finger at them, setting them up as somehow a problem that has to be managed, fuelling and giving ground and concessions to the sort of people who are engaging in pogroms in the North at the moment. To be honest, that is what I think the Government is up to here. I do not really see, other than that, the reasons for this legislation. I am deeply concerned about what the Government is doing. We will have more detailed questions on Committee Stage about all of this. The Minister of State did not even accept many of the recommendations put forward by the joint committee on how this legislation should be processed, which begs serious questions about what the real agenda behind it is.

The question with this Bill, as with previous ones, is: will it help families, particularly low-and-middle income families, to access affordable and secure accommodation? I have particularly in mind those in private rented accommodation. The concern is that the Minister of State is bringing in further measures and amendments to what was brought in in March. That was one of the most far-reaching Bills relating to tenants and renters in this country because the Minister threw them completely at the mercy of free market speculation. That was a recipe for disaster. Let us look across at America and other countries, where unbridled free-marketeering is the order of the day. What I am hearing from some parts of the country and from my own constituency, Laois, is that those changes have been piled on. I am seeing it with the number of people coming into my constituency office. Since November-December of last year and right up to yesterday, the effects of those changes have been seen by us at local level. It is piling huge pressure on households and individuals renting. There is a case on the street where I have my office where more than half the income of a household is going on rent. That is not sustainable. We cannot do that. That is the result of what is happening here, in this legislation and previous legislation that the Minister brought in. The notices to quit continue to spiral. Rents in new tenancies have not just hit the roof but gone out through it. In particular, a cap needs to be reimposed in section 8. I will table an amendment to that effect. Most of us were critical of the rent pressure zones. We would have liked them to be stronger and there are ways out of it, but they provided some cooling effect in the municipal districts where they applied. The evidence of that is that when the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government removed them, we could see what happened. The evidence is there in the rent reports of Daft.ie. Looking at the Residential Tenancies Board figures, everything shows. It is not only us telling the Minister; the hard data tells him this. I told the Minister about the increases in Laois. The average increase for a two-bedroom house or apartment has risen by 34% in the space of one year. Now there is nothing else that I know of that has gone up 34%. That is like something that would happen in a banana republic but that happened in County Laois. Nobody is disputing it because it can be seen in the hard data. Three-bedroom new lets cost over €2,000 a month. It is the law of the jungle. Nothing less than that is what has happened. It is Trumpian-style politics and that is regrettable. I recognise that some small landlords are being fair enough about it. In a lot of cases, they have tried to not be too penal about it. On top of all that then, in recent times the Minister has lowered the standards and for apartments and the size, including the sizes of windows. The last time window sizes were reduced was under British rule because one of the issues on which the rent was based was the amount of light going into the little cabins that people lived in. Here we are now with 36 sq. m apartments and the Minister has limited the light going into them. Not alone has he limited space, he has limited the light. Then the developers building apartments, including those who had started, got a tax break. To cap it all, the Minister is bringing in this measure on rent so you have tenants competing against each other for somewhere to live. That is what is being played. It is like an auction and some landlords are using that. In all of this, the context is always important. I am raising this with the Minister of State because I am hearing this from constituents day in, day out. All of this is happening at a time the cost of living is going up. There is no disputing it, with increases in the cost of electricity, fuel, groceries and transport. The coming winter will be very difficult. We are in June now, but renters and a lot of people who have mortgages are struggling badly at present. The message I want to convey to the Minister of State is the human cost to all this. There is a human cost in terms of stress. There is a human cost in terms of mental health. There is a human cost in terms of conflict within families over it. Health is affected, relationships are breaking down and, of course, there is poverty. He will have seen the figures for child poverty earlier in the week. That is not good enough in one of the richest states in the world. As always, I am not arguing for willy-nilly measures to be brought in. What I am trying to get across to the Minister of State is that the cumulative effect of the measures the Minister has taken over recent times has reduced standards, that landlords, and particularly big landlords and developers, have benefited, and that the Minister has piled further pressure to people who are already struggling. That is not good enough. We do not need to be doing this. There was another road to take with this. The impact of the measures being imposed by the Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government should be assessed. We should let it run maybe to the six-month point, and the effect of this on people and on housing should be assessed at that stage in September or October. It should be examined in the cold light of day. I urge the Government to do that. The Minister may have disputed what we were saying to him in January, February and March but we were seeing what was happening on the ground. Let us see the effects of this in six months and see what is happening. I am asking the Minister of State to use this Bill. He has introduced a pile of amendments. I ask him to go back and look at this and to try to put some cooling effect on the spiralling cost of private rented accommodation. None of this will do anything for low-and-middle income households who are really under pressure. We should not be doing this to people. This is not fair. What has happened is not fair and everybody here in this House, if they look at the evidence, will recognise that. That is not the type of society that we should be trying to live in. Of course, we need more housing. The measures the Minister of State brought in will not provide more housing. They are providing more hardship. That is what they are doing and that is not good enough.

I welcome the Bill. As Chair of the housing committee, I am disappointed that some of the cross-party recommendations that were put forward by the committee have not been included in the Bill. The Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2026, which came in on 1 March of this year and which I supported, is about giving certainty to tenancies but it is also about creating an environment where we will see further investment in the market to try to unlock all those tens of thousands of planning permissions for apartments that have not been built and ultimately provide new housing units. Deputy Stanley made a point with regard to that Bill. This is something I have said publicly as Chair of the committee as well. As a committee we will be looking at the Act after 12 months. I have always believed this will take a number of months to settle but in the long term, it is the right thing to do. As a committee, we will be looking at the effects of it and the figures after 12 months. The Bill is about creating statutory arrangements for residential requirements, eligibility for social housing and including a new habitual residency requirement. There is also a number of other technical amendments. These legislative reforms build on the existing policy and procedures that define social housing as a long-term housing support. The legislation sets out residents' requirements for Irish, UK, EU, EEA and non-EU-EEA applicants. It also adds a new requirement that applicants be habitually resident in the State. The addition of that requirement is consistent with the approach taken by social protection legislation. It is considered appropriate to ensure social housing support recipients are, in fact, resident in the State. We discussed with Department officials the need for a provision, which was included in previous programmes for Government, to ensure this requirement does not mean returning Irish emigrants are at a disadvantage. People who hold Irish passports, if they have gone abroad for work purposes or whatever it might be, are still Irish citizens when they return to this country and should be entitled to the same rights as those who remain here. The Bill puts in place a new statutory appeals mechanism in respect of local authority decisions relating to housing eligibility and assessment in general. Detailed provisions are set out in regard to this mechanism, stipulating that each local authority will appoint an appeals officer to decide on cases and ensure they are fully independent. It is important that these appeals officers are based within every local authority rather than at a national level. There is a streamlining of enforcement of RTB determination orders through the courts, allowing Garda members and housing authority officials, if required, to give evidence in RTB cases. The RTB is empowered to issue 28-day fixed payment notices for certain offences, to hold hearings in the context of an adjudication tribunal and to sanction cases to be held in public. This is about giving more certainty for both tenants and landlords. An issue that is not dealt with in the legislation is where a person from my county of Longford, for example, who moved to Dublin and was on a housing list there for X number of years without being allocated a house now wants to move back to Longford. The period in which people are on a housing list in another county should be taken into account when they move back to their home county. Will the Minister of State ask his officials to look at that issue? It is only right that people who return to their home county having not been made a housing offer in the county where they had been living should not go back to day one. The length of time they were on the housing list in the other county should be taken into account. The legislation introduces requirements on landlords in respect of the RTB. The State, through our local authorities, is a landlord with a large number of tenancies. If we are putting in place strict requirements for private landlords, the State must likewise ensure it provides housing that is to a proper standard, including safety standard, for local authority tenants. Committee colleagues and I visited the Oliver Bond flats this morning to meet with residents. I ask that their situation be looked at again. The proposals put forward by Dublin City Council, which is the local housing authority, should be reviewed in terms of what is right for the residents. It is about building communities and homes for families, not units. Going out and seeing what is being proposed locally is the right thing to do. It is incumbent on the Government and the Department to put strong measures in place to support families in the same way we ask landlords to support their tenants. I fully support the Bill. It is the right measure to create certainty for tenants into the future. It will bring in investment. I ask that consideration be given to ensuring returning Irish emigrants have certainty that they will have entitlement straight away and not have to prove it. If people are Irish citizens, they should not have to do anything else at all to secure that entitlement. I also ask that where people spend time on a housing list in another county and then return to their home county, the time spent on the list is carried forward with them. I refer only to the particular circumstance where someone is returning to his or her home county.

It is long overdue for the Government to enact some changes to ensure that the implementation and enforcement of relevant Department circulars is put on a statutory footing. In doing so, the Bill takes some steps that are tentatively welcome but significant concerns remain that the legislation may make it increasingly difficult for those who should be entitled to access social housing to do so by increasing and complicating the criteria they have to meet. The Bill suggests an unreality in which the existing situation is in any way easy. It already is a complication and an absolute ordeal for many families just to get onto the list, never mind the journey towards getting an allocation. Individuals in our society who urgently require the support of public housing and emergency accommodation must have clearer pathways to accessing those rights. They must not be presented with further hurdles and complications. The Minister has assured us the Bill will not have such an impact on those requiring public housing but significant concern remains about what its ultimate outcome will be. A critical element of concern is the requirement that the habitual residency condition apply to every member of a household applying for social housing. Any of us who deal with social housing applicants know very many applicants will fall foul of this new rule and that it has been designed for just that reason. The habitual residency condition should only apply to one member of a household, not the entire household. The new rule is designed to ensure many households will not have access to public housing. An area that demands significant attention and modification is the ability of individuals to move between different local authorities without losing the social housing status they have obtained. A proposal to that effect, introduced in the Social Housing Passport Bill 2026, would have allowed individuals experiencing a variety of different problems and needs to transfer their status to their new local authority. Under current law, if individuals need to relocate to another area, they must reapply and, in effect, start from scratch. Many of us have asked colleagues in other constituencies to make representations to housing officials on behalf of families who are forced to move from our constituency - in my case, Dublin Fingal - to the colleague's constituency, whether that be in south Kildare, Meath, Louth or elsewhere, because of unemployment or inability to access private rental accommodation. Those people need to build lives, get their children into schools, etc., but could face losing the six, seven, eight, nine or ten years they have spent on the previous local authority housing list. That should not be allowed to happen. Another concerning element of the Bill is the application of a slip rule to all documentation that accompanies a notice of termination, including other relevant or similar statutory declarations. It is of the utmost importance that the handling of infractions of the magnitude of ending an individual's tenancy is done with clarity. Changing or altering contracts or documents without the proper procedure and at a moment's notice leaves room for significant harm. By allowing corrections to statutory documents and declarations in this manner, we are putting at risk the due process that protects tenants and other individuals involved. It is deeply important that should errors arise, whether clerical in nature or otherwise, they are handled and resolved in a manner that allows for the traditional due process for corrections. There is concern about the rigour of the new independent appeals process set out in the Bill. As recommended in the 2024 pre-legislative scrutiny report, this should be entirely independent of local authorities. Although the Bill establishes a formal independent statutory appeals process, it does not provide for its operation through a central body rather than through the proposed dedicated appeals officers. Anything but a central body would result in significant deficiencies and be incapable of meeting the gravity of these problems. The use of a central body for decision-making would allow expertise and institutional knowledge to accumulate over time, with the ultimate goal of a holistic and consistent system. These processes must go further in order to ensure the development of an appeals system that works for the benefit of the individuals who are in great need of help. Additionally, the introduction of this Bill has sparked deep, wide-reaching concerns among numerous human rights groups and other related charities and organisations, as it could restrict critical access to many programmes, such as emergency homelessness services and highly sought-after social housing for society's most vulnerable and at-risk groups. We must not ignore these calls for help. The core of these issues arises from the proposed right to reside and habitual residence conditions as prerequisites to receive public housing. Various front-line groups have cautioned that these measures risk the exclusion of at-risk individuals from the basic emergency shelter they so desperately need. This would effectively create a direct and purposeful pipeline to more homelessness and individuals on the street without proper accommodation. On homelessness, this Bill would greatly restrict access to social housing that so many individuals require. In the Bill as drafted, there exists no critical provisions for emergency accommodation as recommended by the Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage. It is of critical importance that we enable those in urgent need to acquire the social housing they so desperately seek. The focus of the Department of housing should be on taking effective action to meet these problems head on. It is of the utmost importance that this Government supports those in critical need, rather than imposing more restrictive access on individuals with such great needs, which this Bill would ultimately do. The issue of quality, affordable and easy to access housing remains a critical concern for many individuals in society. The damage this Government is doing with its housing policy is crippling communities. These are communities that have struggled, survived and thrived at various times over the years, but are now facing great harm from this Government. I will return to the issue of the Oliver Bond flats, an area that is very close to my heart. I spent an awful lot of time growing up there. I would not be here without Oliver Bond. It gave my nana and grandad a home when they needed one, and my dad and his siblings grew up there. There are five generations of people living in Oliver Bond who have, through all those generations, worked to ensure it has thrived and have created a wonderful, warm community. It has received regeneration in the past which has benefited the flats. I met Gayle Cullen Doyle a couple of weeks ago in Oliver Bond, and she spoke about the regeneration of the late 1980s and early 1990s. I remember the physical regeneration at the time. I remember the double-glazed windows, central heating and showers going in. Oliver Bond survived for 50 years without basic showering, central heating and all these things we take for granted in the modern day. Along with that, which I did not notice at the time as I was too young, investment and resources went in, with diversion programmes, drug addiction resources and health resources. That all went in at the time. Gayle will tell you - she has told anyone who has visited - that this was a big improvement. It helped turn around the difficulties of the 1980s in terms of the drug epidemic, which I have vivid memories of from that period in my mind's eye. However, that investment stopped and has stopped for the past 20 years. Now, Oliver Bond receives attention through the media for poor living quality and poor health outcomes. What does this Government and the Department do? It turns its back on the plan of investment for Oliver Bond to ensure that the next five generations of families can live there because, ultimately, the bottom line is they will lose 28 units in an overall regeneration. Instead of talking about units, the Government should be talking about homes. Oliver Bond and other flat complexes that remain in Dublin city are the beating heart and the last vestige of a living city, such has been the hollowing out of the city for people to be able to live there. If we continue to hollow out Oliver Bond, Pearse House, Markievicz House and others, we will push families further out of Dublin city and hollow it out. Oliver Bond should not be one-bedroom apartments and studios. It should be one-bedroom, studio, two-bedroom and three-bedroom homes. The whole panoply of community should be allowed to live there for the next 90 years and beyond. It should not be about the bottom line all the time. We need more housing; we need copious amounts of it. We need thousands more one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom homes all over the country. A reduction of 28 units would have to be accounted for, but when it will deliver overall more family homes for a community that has been in Dublin for 90 years, and needs to be there for another 90 years and beyond, Dublin City Council will need to swallow that. Those in opposition who are housing spokespeople and interested in this issue will understand that when it comes to regeneration projects because we know the complexities of it. Unfortunately, it seems those complexities are lost on the Department of housing. I am hoping that in the decision made in four to five weeks' time we will see common sense prevail, and that we will see a future not only for Oliver Bond but for other local authority complexes throughout Dublin city.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill this afternoon. An Teachta Ó Broin has outlined in detail the Sinn Féin position on this legislation. I will say one thing, and this is more of a general point than a specific one, that at this early stage in the legislative process, the tabling of pages and pages of ministerial amendments is a little bit concerning. That is no disrespect to the people who put the work into drafting them, but it indicates a little bit of confusion, chaos and unpreparedness - I do not know what word you would use - on behalf of the Government. The issue of housing is so important and it is very important we get it right. However, this is not the only legislation relating to housing where a Bill has been published and then almost immediately we have got a raft of ministerial amendments. It is very sloppy and speaks to a Government that is effectively disinterested in the legislative process. It is also disrespectful to those spokespersons who want to engage with the legislation and the amendments. At this stage, there should not be pages and pages of ministerial amendments to this legislation. Best practice would say that work should be done before publication but, again, there was a rush to publish for reasons that are not clear to me. However, the Minister of State will have an opportunity in his concluding remarks to answer that. I ask myself a very simple question when I consider any legislation relating to housing. Will it help my constituents who are homeless, who are in emergency accommodation and who need stable, secure and affordable accommodation? For as long as I have been here, I have yet to see any legislation, aside from the Covid eviction ban, coming from Government that helps my constituents. In fact, in the ten years since I was elected, governments led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - taking turns - have made the housing and homelessness crisis much worse. One very effective measure we have to gauge how effective Government policy is are the lists it publishes every month with the number of homeless people. That in itself is very worrying. I have said before that it is not normal to publish a list of people who are homeless every single month. That certainly did not happen when I was growing up. I know the Government would love for us to normalise that level of homelessness, but we will not. I will ask a question of the Minister of State, who will have a chance in his remarks to address this. I will give him an example. There is a family living in my constituency - a mam, a dad and a son. They live in Balbriggan and the parents are both working locally. They are in private rental accommodation, have a notice to quit and are due out in September. I am working with them, and they have replied to hundreds of accommodation adverts at this stage, but they have nowhere to live. September will come fast. The Minister of State knows it himself. You think it is going to take ages but it does not; it goes in a flash. This family is faced with the prospect of having to go into emergency accommodation but the dad, in this instance, is gravely ill and undergoing medical treatment for cancer. He is getting chemotherapy at the moment. His doctor asks about his housing situation every time he goes in to see him because of the level of stress it causes him. He asks, "Where are you going to be?" because he has embarked on a treatment schedule that is going to take months. They have come to me - no other TD has an office in my area - and asked what emergency accommodation is like. The Minister of State knows it is not nice. He would not like to live in it and neither would l, but that is where they are heading. He cannot go there because of his medical condition, yet I cannot answer where they are supposed to go. The Minister of State might answer that for them in his remarks.

It is good that we are discussing housing, albeit a miscellaneous provisions Bill. I have not seen the Minister's amendments, even at this stage. We dealt with another miscellaneous Bill last night on justice and, at the last minute, we were dealing with a large volume of amendments which were not relevant to the original purpose of the Bill. They were related to justice all right and they were miscellaneous but that was not what the Bill was. Hopefully, the amendments that have been tabled will address some of the issues I have. One of the issues that we are dealing with in this State is basically that the State is totally dependent on private landlords and, in many cases, vulture funds to deal with housing issues. Yet we are here. Maybe it is about standardising the eligibility criteria. I never noticed that there was a problem in Dublin City Council, which is the local authority I mainly deal with. I think local authorities understood who was eligible and who was not across the board. Maybe we need a standardisation across the whole country to ensure similar processes and approaches to what we had in Dublin City Council with the points system and a scheme of lettings. There is a new scheme of lettings, which is another change only voted on last night and even that did not address all of the issues. There are little peculiarities in Dublin City Council. Even in Dublin someone is allowed to be on three lists at the same time - three of the council lists because there are four local authorities in Dublin. The problem now is that many of those who end up homeless and then end up in hot properties who are from Dublin are ending up in Kildare, Wicklow or somewhere else, but they are not allowed to be on the Dublin City Council housing list any more because their focus of interest, according to the council, is elsewhere. You have to fight each case. Maybe there is a need for a single list for the whole country. It needs to be thought about even though there may be problems with it, such as taking away some of the powers of the local authority. We need to ensure the model works. Others have highlighted the Vienna model which addresses the thresholds, which are absolutely meaningless in this city. There are couples who are working and once two adults in a house work they are basically nearly over the threshold at this stage. If they are not, they are getting penalised in Dublin City Council because they have just increased the rents to screw them, despite the fact that they are not getting a property that would stand up to the standards set by legislation for private landlords. There is a problem. If the price of housing keeps going up at the rate it is going, it means more and more people become dependent on social housing or housing supports, mainly HAP but also RAS. A third of the private tenancies in this country are now subsidised by the State which is absolutely crazy. It is crazy that the State is now beholden to private landlordism. We should have gone away from that. We had moved away from it even when there was no funding there. When there was no money, there was availability of social housing. The lack of investment and the lack of building have forced us into a place where couples and families who are trying to buy are now competing against the private sector, the vulture funds or even just small-time capitalists who want the property because they know it will pay for itself through their mortgage. They are sometimes fighting against the local authority as well which causes its own problems. I could go into a whole list of problems in terms of the estate agents and how they are gaming the system at this stage and trying to drive up prices. That might be something that the Government could look at. If you want miscellaneous provisions, there is a whole area there that could regulate that market a lot better and stop them driving up the prices as well.