Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-09 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I echo the point the Senator made about Bessborough. We introduced legislation to try to ensure that the definition of "unsuitable burial place" was widened to include Bessborough. On the same day, the initial planning decision came through. It is a disgrace. Other mechanisms need to be looked at to ensure that a great damage is not done to those who suffered so much in a place with over 70% mortality rates for children, within the grounds of that space. The Minister spoke about social housing but one of the key concerns here is about emergency accommodation. There are very significant changes in terms of emergency accommodation for the very large numbers of homeless people in the State, of whom there are almost 18,000 currently. This figure has grown year on year. Rather than having a massive acceleration of supports, and notwithstanding all the "go fast" talk we are hearing from other parts of the Government on different measures - critical infrastructure, data centres and all the rest - it seems that the measures are designed to push down the numbers in the system, not by providing people with safe and secure housing but by messing with the eligibility standards. That is a concerning provision. I will get to my core concern in a moment. There are a few changes to emergency accommodation. For example, one measure will allow housing authorities to require persons to vacate emergency accommodation when they have refused offers of rental social housing accommodation. This is a very concerning provision when we consider, for example, families, mothers and their children and others who may be offered unsuitable rental accommodation as a social housing support and may, for good reason, refuse such an offer. They could now find themselves in a situation where they are no longer even being given emergency accommodation. Again, the provisions of the Bill allow for a family to be removed from emergency accommodation where they have refused offers of rental social housing accommodation. I will go to the core issue, which is the amendments that were added in, thereby avoiding proper scrutiny and the testimony and analysis of experts that should have taken place as part of pre-legislative scrutiny. That is why we have legal experts, housing charities and homelessness services writing to us expressing very significant and clear concerns about section 7. This section inserts a new section 10A into the Housing Act in relation to the residency requirements for access to emergency homelessness support. This is not the social housing piece and the residency. There are questions marks around how that is applied as well, which I am sure we will come to. This is around emergency homelessness supports and the safety net provided by emergency housing. This new section would mean that housing authorities do not have to provide access to their emergency housing or homelessness supports to applicants under the International Protection Act 2026 who are homeless, to people who are here for short-term work or on student or tourist visas, who may have experienced an issue of any kind, and many other classes of refugees that the Minister deems not to be entitled to that basic level of emergency homelessness support. Instead of providing access to proper homelessness supports, there will now be a potential new mechanism of night-to-night accommodation, for one night at a time, where individuals seek accommodation arrangements. Then, the following night, under subsections (3) and (4) of section 10A, accommodation will only be provided between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. This is the language in the Bill. The Minister suggested it was because some people were interpreting "night" as very long. There is almost a suggestion we are trying to make sure people get to come in at 8 a.m. or 8 p.m. As well as it being only that a housing authority "may" make arrangements for that person on the one night, that they only "may" do so between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. on the date immediately following that date. It is saying that a local authority will be in a position to say that it was told not to give homelessness supports to someone and the legislation only provides that it is allowed to give that person support or housing between the hours of 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. That is as the section is drafted. There are really concerning provisions here that allow - I will come to more of them in a moment - local authorities to refuse to make accommodation arrangements if the person seeking them has refused accommodation even once in the two years previously. If, on one occasion, a person declines emergency accommodation, for two years nobody has to offer that person anything at all. There are many reasonable explanations for why people might refuse accommodation support, particularly where they have experienced trauma, are distressed or are concerned about the implications if they are on a student visa or a short-term work visa. There may be people who may wish to try to find an alternative way of dealing with a situation and may find themselves afraid of the emergency accommodation being provided. There are many other reasons persons may decline in one instance. Doing so will now result in them being denied any of that minimal, night-by-night accommodation for two years. Much of the emergency accommodation being offered to people who are homeless is not suitable for them. That is the kind of thing that a state with resources and revenue could be addressing. To preclude someone who is homeless from any emergency support because they previously declined unsuitable accommodation or accommodation, which they felt to be unsafe, is exclusionary and unfair. What does the Minister envisage happening when people are refused emergency accommodation support and are taken out of the housing support? The numbers involved may not necessarily be large but people become very visible when they have nowhere to go. Will they be turned out into the street? I say this because in the recent past there was low-key dog-whistling about the housing crisis. I have heard all of the excuses over the past decade when the Government has completely failed to address the situation. It was all about planning, planning objections, and terrible communities and environmentalists taking judicial reviews, and that is why there was not planning and enough housing for everybody. Then it was all about the councillors - those councillors with their parochial approach, who were refusing to properly engage. They were the problem. It was all of these problems, even though we know there is a lot of land hoarding and planning permissions that are not activated. Those issues are not being addressed but that is a slightly wider issue. The key thing is the language we now see is about demographics, as if the housing and homelessness crises we have do not relate to clearly signalled concerns and problems with Government policies, housing supply and other measures where there has been a call for action. It has landed on us somehow with words like "demographics". This contributes to that because it is kind of saying that we are addressing that big problem whereby people who do not have residency are taking accommodation. That is not true. When the Government responded to the far-right push against housing refugees and asylum seekers and forced them to sleep rough on the street just a couple of summers ago, that fuelled more far-right rhetoric because then people were visible, and the visible homelessness problem becomes a problem that particularly affects very vulnerable people such as migrants and others. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:11+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-09