Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-14 ============================================================ Aubrey McCarthy (IND), University of Dublin My purpose with the amendment was to safeguard human rights, preventing homelessness and ensuring the legislation reflects a modern republic. The amendment was literally for a human rights and equality assessment to be carried out and a strategy devised to protect people in Ireland under the EU temporary protection directive, ensuring none are pushed into homelessness as an unintended consequence of this Bill. The amendment further requires that the strategy should uphold EU anti-human trafficking laws and include the voices of human rights, immigration rights and homelessness organisations. The purpose of me pushing the amendment was that the likes of Focus Ireland, Tiglin and other front-line organisations have raised serious concerns about this Bill, as the legislation is the first major change in homelessness law since 1988. I hope that while modernising the system, the Bill does not drag us backwards to a Victorian model of night shelters and conditional access to basic humanitarian protection. I know the Bill introduces new barriers to emergency shelter. As the Minister is aware, my organisation has a homeless café on Pearse Street and we see people every evening who are looking for accommodation and help in any way. It is a barrier I hope will not fall hardest on people who are fleeing domestic violence, people who have mental health issues or families who have been recently evicted. I hope the Bill will not affect them and that is the purpose of my amendment here so it is well intentioned. Many of those people urgently need a safe place to sleep and if we proceed without the safeguards we risk increasing rough sleeping, even though that is certainly not the Minister's intention. I acknowledge the Government has pointed to a so-called safety net but that provision only allows night-by-night access from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. That in itself does not provide stability, security or dignity. It makes no allowances for winter darkness nor for parents with children. It is not consistent with the modern, housing-led approaches to homelessness. I feel in that it is a step backwards. The Minister knows we have more than 17,500 people in emergency accommodation and the number has come down by 100 in the last census but in the coming months I know it will possibly increase with the temporary protection being removed from our Ukrainian friends in Ireland. I have put it on record that I want the Minister to be the most successful housing Minister and I want to be such a cheerleader for the housing plan and for the Government but we need a whole-of-government approach to this issue. Otherwise we will have a generation of children growing up in emergency accommodation and that is a problem. --- 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/2026-07-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:15+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-14