Eoin Ó Broin
Dublin Mid-West · Sinn Féin · Ireland
“It is disappointing that, when several journalists have contacted the Government and the Department looking to confirm on the record that HAP and RAS tenants are not included - we know that they are not - and set out why and if that will be reconsidered, instead of giving a straight answer that, yes, they have been excluded, and explainin…”
“Will it try to remove survivors when they chain themselves to the gates in protest, as they have said they will, or will it finally listen to them and hear their calls for respect, justice and truth? Will it buy the Bessborough site and stop this outrage from happening?”
“According to the latest summary of social housing needs assessments, 61,000 households are on council waiting lists, although we know a large number of them are single people. About 49,000 households at the end of last year were on HAP, while there were about 7,500 private sector RAS recipients of the 14,000.”
“We are setting out five specific sets of circumstances where that would be permissible. Under our scheme, the person moving from Youghal to Clonakilty would have to have a specific reason like taking up a job or education in Clonakilty or accessing long-term medical treatment, etc.”
“First, importantly it would be for both people on the list and people in receipt of social housing support, such as HAP and RAS. It is not just the 61,000 households on our council lists but also the 55,000 or so households in HAP or private sector RAS.”
“Sure. I thank the Minister of State for his reply. My natural disposition as a person is to treat people at face value, but ten years in this House has made a bit of a cynic of me.”
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“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“It is the same with disability allowance. We also have a larger number of working adult children forced to live at home because of the housing crisis, which can also result in families losing their position on the list. I am talking to colleagues in my own parliamentary party, and I am sure the Minister is doing likewise, who are having constituents removed off the list and they have no other option. This is something we would be keen to work with the Minister on, but it is quite urgent.”
“First, I fully agree with my committee colleague. In the Minister's consideration of this, it should not just be a question of the limit. When the Minister spoke about this at committee before, he was also looking at possibly linking the eligibility thresholds to some metric, and I have given that some thought since the committee meeting. Given that social housing is typically for a set percentage of households depending on their income, EU-SILC data, which is updated every year, could provide a useful link. In addition, I urge the Minister to look at the income disregard. We have a situation where, for example, the State awards the working family payment because it recognises that the working income of families is too low to meet an adequate standard of living, but that can then push them above the threshold.”
“This is probably the only product in the world where the price you pay for it is not the price that it cost to deliver it, plus profits, but a fictional valuation of an open market value. As for the only additional question I will ask, the Minister may not be able to answer it because it predates him taking up his current role. At any stage was the consideration of using open market value a concern about the potential impact of an affordable housing scheme on surrounding private market houses? Unlike cost rental where there is a deliberate Government policy - which I support - for cost rental to moderate private sector rents over time as that grows, was that a policy that was deliberately avoided with affordable purchase so as not to have any impact or to moderate rising private market home prices in neighbouring housing estates?”
“Those homes probably cost - what Glenveagh was probably paid for those - about €50,000 less than the open market value, so people end up paying far more. There are better ways to deal with the challenges of future sale under the scheme. I just do not understand why the Minister would use a valuation that significantly increases the cost of development when the price of those homes is already too high for far too many working people.”
“I thank the Minister for that explanation. The difficulty is that part of the problem is that not only is he not meeting his formal purchase targets, but in many instances the full cost of those properties is exceptionally high. In fact, in some developments it is as much as €500,000 and others, including the ones he referenced in my constituency, it is €440,000 to own the property outright. The difficulty is that by using open market value rather than all-in cost of development, we are increasing the cost to the purchaser and making the homes even less affordable. For example, we do not get any benefits if the land is provided by the local authority, or indeed if there is a significant gap between the development costs and the OMV. Let us take, for example, Glenveagh in Oscar Traynor Road.”
“I have raised this with the Minister before. It is really to try to understand where this particular policy originated. As he knows, OMV is calculated prior to any discounts being applied for the purposes of affordable purchase schemes. That open market valuation does not necessarily have to be based on the all-in cost of development and in some developments is coming in significantly above that. It is not in the legislation or in any of the statutory instruments. When I discussed the matter with local authorities they told us that they do not know the origin of it. I am looking for the origin and an explanation of why this is the policy.”
“Can the Minister give us some assurance that no caps will be included in the overall scheme and that where the issue of caps is being discussed with respect to procurement challenges for retrospective payments, he is hoping to find a solution so nobody is out of pocket and they get the full cost remediation, whether retrospectively or into the future?”
“I thank the Minister for that clarity. One assumes that while the Minister may publish before the summer recess, it is likely the Bill will only come before the Oireachtas in the autumn. It is fair to say, to give some clarity to owners' management companies, that that means it is highly unlikely a scheme will open for applications this year, and it will more likely be next year. With respect to the memo the Minister spoke about regarding retrospective pathfinders, there was some media commentary that there might have been some consideration of the issue of caps.”
“Will the Minister give us some clarity on when the legislation will be published, when it will be passed and when it will be open to applications, and some indication of the extent to which he will be able to accelerate funding approval for more of the 22,000 homes that urgently need interim fire safety funding?”
“I appreciate the answer, although none of that is new information. The specific question I asked was when this legislation will be published. When does the Minister expect it to complete its passage through the Oireachtas? When does he hope owners’ management companies will be able to apply? With respect to the interim scheme, I appreciate that finally four pathfinder projects have been approved, but that relates to over 200 schemes that desperately need this funding and it has been two years or more since the scheme was originally agreed in principle by the Government.”
“The Minister previously informed us that it was his intention to have the legislation to underpin the Celtic tiger-era defects redress scheme not just introduced but passed by the Houses of the Oireachtas by the summer, with the objective that homeowners and owners' management companies could apply for inclusion in the scheme before the end of the year. Obviously, that legislation has not been published. Can he give an update on when it will be published and when he expects to have it passed by the Oireachtas and open to applicants?”
“I would hate to see that we will have the same problems every time a new proposal goes in for each of the subsequent phases or other developments. The sooner that issue is clarified, the better.”
“The hardening attitude of the Department to the issue of amalgamations is a problem. The issue here, in the first instance, should be to ensure that these homes are brought up to modern standards and, exactly as the Minister said, for good estate management, that there is an appropriate mix in each block, as well as across the development. I disagree with the Minister slightly in that I think Dublin City Council had actually put forward not just the proposals for the three blocks in question and Bridgefoot Street, but had also set out to the Department its intentions for the remainder of the complex. There needs to be a clear understanding that the priority has to be to bring these homes up to standard. Where it is possible to get additional units on site or near the site, we absolutely should do that, but it should not be a condition.”
“I am hoping to hear that there is some flexibility to return to the good elements of the Dublin City Council scheme so we can get the resolution that the residents of the Oliver Bond complex, in particular, desperately need.”
“Likewise, I refer to the explanation given by the Minister’s officials to us in the housing committee last week that it was possible to build 13 units inside the existing development but that the Bridgefoot Street development could not be considered, in which case it would be possible to get 43 units as part of the overall scheme. That is a mistake.”
“I thank the Minister. This may be one of those rare occasions where we might have more in common than we have to disagree about. I do think the letter sent by the Minister’s officials to Dublin City Council in April was a mistake. The Department’s position had shifted significantly from the stage 1 approval in 2023 or 2024. The amalgamation of blocks L, M and N from 74 units to 46 units had already been approved in principle two years ago. In fact, the revised scheme from Dublin City Council includes a significant improvement with the addition of a community centre.”
“I understand the Minister had a very frank and potentially positive meeting with the Oliver Bond regeneration forum, so I am hoping he can update the House on the progress that was made and also listen to some of the concerns some of us continue to have with the approach being taken by the Department, not just with respect to the Oliver Bond complex but also concerning the other inner-city flat complex regeneration projects across Dublin.”
“We did not expect the Minister to support it but if these trends continue and the number of people who are being harmed because of the policies he is implementing continues to grow, at what point will he say enough is enough? Will it be after six months, 12 months or two years? Until he accepts that, we will continue to highlight his errors and to put forward alternatives. That is why I commend this motion to the House.”
“He can make all the comparisons he wants with the 1970s but we have twice the population now we had then and the level of social housing need is far greater. The State would need to double social housing output on its current level to come anywhere close to meeting the level of need. The housing targets the Minister is meeting the least are his affordable housing targets. He is so far off and the vast majority of the units still are not affordable and the private sector still is not delivering enough private homes for working people to buy, again because the Minister’s activation measures are not working or are not the right choices. We have set out a set of alternatives.”
“The ones who cannot get tenancies will be forced to move back home with their parents, forced to emigrate or forced to present for emergency homeless accommodation. It is likely that the consequence of this will be that homeless presentations will continue to trend steadily upwards. The Minister is doing all that on a promise that we might get increased rental accommodation in the form of high-density, high-cost rental developments in very specific parts of the State. They will not be in the Minister’s county or in the counties of the majority of TDs. That strategy is not going to work. In the meantime, the decisions he is making are in real time punishing renters for his housing policy failures. All the while the Minister is not meeting his social housing targets.”
“That means there will be thousands of additional people looking for rental accommodation at a time when the rate of rental inflation is going through the roof. We are back to 2014, 2015 and 2016. That is what the Minister has done. He is telling people he is doing that so at some distant point in future there may be supply they may be able to afford, but what we are trying to highlight to him, and what the RTB data and soon-to-be-published Daft.ie data will tell him is right now there are real-world consequences to the decisions he has made impacting upon thousands upon thousands of people. No doubt some of those people will get new tenancies but they will be pushed into ever-greater financial hardship.”
“When the Minister made his announcement last summer about the intended changes to the regulation of the rental sector two things happened. The first is that every quarter since July there has been a dramatic increase in eviction notices. In July, August and September it was a 38% increase. In October, November and December it was 41%. In the most recent figures it was 51%. That is the direct consequence of the policy decisions the Minister and his colleagues in the Government have made. During that whole period rents continued to rise so the Minister knows what is going to happen when we get both the Daft and RTB data from 1 March. He knows we are going to be moving back into double-digit rental inflation, first in some cities and then State-wide.”
“That requires the Government to introduce the kinds of reforms set out by Sinn Féin, the Housing Commission and others to see the supply of social, genuinely affordable and private for-purchase homes increase and accelerate way beyond where the Government is currently at. How bad do things have to get before the Government accepts it has done something wrong? How much more hardship will it foist on renters? Our motion sets out the alternative. It is time the Government stopped looking after the interests of big investors and developers and started standing up for renters. It is on this basis that I commend the motion to the House.”
“The motion we have tabled tonight is not just to highlight all of those Government failures but to tell the Government loud and clear that renters need a different approach. It is an approach that recognises that rents are already too high and must be cut. It recognises that rent increases cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely and that we need an emergency ban on such increases for three years. Crucially, at a time when homeless services are completely overwhelmed, we need an emergency ban on no-fault evictions where the tenant has done nothing wrong. Of course, what we really need is not larger volumes of smaller, darker and more expensive apartments but, rather, the right kind of supply in the right place at the right price.”
“In many cases, working people, including single people, couples and families with children, will be forced into the indignity of moving back in with their parents because they have nowhere else to go. Others will see it as the straw that broke the camel's back and that they have no option but to emigrate to Canada, Australia, New Zealand or elsewhere. Worst of all, we will see an acceleration in the number of single people, couples and adults with children presenting as homeless and entering into emergency accommodation at a time when the numbers in such accommodation are higher than at any other time since records began. Those are the consequences of the Government's policy. It has done this knowingly and deliberately and it has done so for no good reason.”
“What does that mean? Right now, thousands of renters, single people, couples, families with children and pensioners do not know where they are going to live in six months. They are now desperately searching for an alternative rental, just at the time when Government allows landlords to jack up the rent for new rentals. What will the consequences be? Some renters will be able to find a new home but they will pay thousands of euro more than what they would otherwise have been paying in rent. Many others will not be able to secure a rental, particularly in the big cities of Waterford, Galway, Limerick and Cork. The daft.ie figures, whenever they are published, will be very revealing. What will people do?”
“In fact, according to one academic, this is the highest number of evictions since the Famine. That is truly astonishing. Contrary to the Government's attempts to explain this away, it is the third straight quarter in which we have seen a dramatic increase in eviction notices since the Minister announced his foolhardy changes. The RTB report also announced rents increasing significantly up to the end of last year. It now costs more than €20,000 minimum, on average, to rent across the State while in Dublin at the end of last year, the minimum was €26,000. It is going to be very interesting when we get to see the first set of Daft.ie figures, which are imminent, on the market rent reset. We will comment on them when they are published. The Minister's proposals will have a limited impact on supply but they will have a huge impact on renters.”
“What we also made clear was that the introduction of the controversial market rent reset would see a dramatic increase in new rents for new tenancies from March of this year and that the incredibly confusing and poorly thought-through changes to tenure arrangements would lead to widespread confusion and an undermining of tenant security. It gives me no pleasure to say this but last week's Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, director's report confirms our worst fears. The Government did such a bad job of explaining what were incredibly complex tenure rules that it has led to an acceleration of the exit of single-property landlords from the market. More than 7,000 eviction notices were issued in the first three months of this year, the highest on record and up 51% on the previous quarter.”
“We said then and we are saying now that, in fact, the only thing that this cocktail of policy changes would do was make renters pay for the failed policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over a decade. We warned the Government that it would not work and that it would lead, at the very best, to a modest increase in apartment supply in parts of Dublin and possibly in Cork city, but that supply would be poorer quality, smaller, darker and more expensive and the rest of the country would get completely left behind.”
“I acknowledge the fact that the Minister is in a meeting with the Oliver Bond Regeneration Forum and I hope he listens carefully to what he hears from the residents. Ten months ago, the Government announced what can only be described as the most controversial restructuring of the private rental sector in a decade. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage unilaterally changed apartment standards, and not in a good way. He outlined changes to rent regulation that were introduced earlier this year and made it clear that it was the Government's intention to give massive tax breaks to apartment developers. When the Minister outlined this, both at the time and subsequently, he said that he was doing it because he believed it would increase the supply of much-needed homes and that over time, rents would reduce.”
“I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes with extreme concern that: — 7,062 eviction notices were issued to tenants from January to March this year, up 51 per cent on the same period in 2025; — at the end of 2025 new rents were up statewide 5 per cent and 4.4 per cent for existing rents; and — six counties had double digit rent inflation last year including Limerick (12.6 per cent), Monaghan (12.4 per cent), Westmeath (11.5 per cent), Offaly (10.8 per cent), Cavan (10.6 per cent) and Galway (9.9 per cent); further notes that: — Statewide new rents were €1,744 per month and existing rents were €1,503 per month at the end of 2025; — new rents in Dublin were €2,232 per month and existing rents were €1,931 per month at the end of last year; — the Residential Tenancies Board's dispute caseload increased by 17.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same time last year; — all of this was prior to the Governments new rent regulations which came into effect which will see rents, evictions and disputes increase over the coming year; — these trends are the direct result of Government policy and will lead to increased displacement of tenants, increased rents and increased homelessness; and — Government continues to miss their social and affordable housing targets, targets that were too low to begin with, too few private for purchase homes are being built or coming to the market; resolves that: — Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's housing policy continues to make the housing crisis worse and in particular is failing renters; calls on Government to: — introduce an emergency ban on rent increases and no-fault evictions; — cut private rents by putting a full month's rent back into every private renter's pockets; — oppose rent increases for Council tenants, those in receipt of Housing Assistance Payment and Rental Accommodation Scheme and cost rental tenants; and — introduce a radical reset of housing policy as set out by the Housing Commission and to increase and accelerate the delivery of social, affordable and private for purchase homes.”
“In light of this significant development, will the Taoiseach ask the Minister for housing to revisit his decision? Dublin City Council's plan is the best proposal to bring these homes up to modern standards while retaining the right number, size and mix of homes for singles, couples and families.”
“For decades, the residents of Oliver Bond House have lived in some of the most appalling conditions in our city. Decades of neglect have left these families living in damp, overcrowded, rat-infested homes. In April, the Department of housing wrote to Dublin City Council refusing a funding request to deep retrofit and amalgamate 74 homes in the flat complex. The rationale was that the council's proposal would see a reduction in the number of flats. The Department set out an alternative approach and requested that the council submit a new proposal. Today, it is revealed that the Department's proposal would result in an even greater reduction in the number of people living in these blocks, with a bed space reduction of 41% compared with the council’s proposal of just 26%.”
“However, the Minister is refusing funding, is pursuing a failed policy and, as a consequence, thousands of people in Dublin, Cork and elsewhere will live in slum conditions. That is his policy. He can come into the House and speak for four or five minutes, having not listened to the debate, and think that might convince somebody. It does not convince us and, more importantly, it does not convince the residents in the flats he is allowing to live in squalor. He should reverse the decision, change the policy, fund the councils to fix the flats and stop misleading this House with information about what is going on on the streets of Dublin, Cork and elsewhere.”
“With respect to the other schemes the Minister has mentioned, he listed off a series of regeneration schemes where communities were destroyed ten or 20 years ago, flung to the four corners of our city, and only now the Department is finally getting around to rebuilding them. The Minister's approach to this is a mistake and it is one he needs to reverse. I think he is being badly advised by the Department. He is refusing to listen to the residents who have given enormous amounts of time to this consultation. The irony is that if a private landlord was the owner of these flats, they would be in front of the Residential Tenancies Board, fined and the problems would be fixed. If an approved housing body was the landlord of these flats, it would be in front of the Residential Tenancies Board and forced to fix them.”