Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-08
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Eoin Ó Broin (SF), Dublin Mid-West

I move amendment No. 1 to amendment No. 1:
In the fourth line, after “in respect of”, to insert “the denial of certain services and”.
This will be discussed with this group.
On a procedural point, these, of course, are not amendments to the Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. This is a new piece of legislation. It was not contained in the general scheme of the Bill our committee did pre-legislative scrutiny on previously. It was not contained in the Bill itself. While the Minister told us he was bringing these amendments forward, the hope was we would at least get them at Committee Stage when we could have had more detailed scrutiny. Even that would have been entirely inadequate because, as the Minister knows, there is very considerable concern both from our homeless services providers and legal organisations which advocate for and represent people at risk of or experiencing homelessness, and indeed, the statutory body that is the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. This should have been brought in as a Bill and undergone pre-legislative scrutiny. It should have gone through proper committee scrutiny. The fact that it has not is really problematic and means the issues we are going to discuss are going to come back in front of this House at some point in the future.
As I said at the start of Second Stage, when the Minister of State was addressing it, from Sinn Féin’s point of view, we are not against the principle of what the Minister is trying to do. However, we have considerable concerns with the way in which this has been presented. I will go through them now and then speak in favour of my own amendment.
Putting the legal and habitual residency requirements which currently operate for access to emergency accommodation on a statutory footing is not in and of itself problematic. I have said that consistently throughout. However, given the complexity of those issues and the complex interaction of Irish and European immigration law, as well as human rights law and housing law and policy, this is an area fraught with difficulty where one must get things right.
I thank the Minister’s officials for the detailed briefing they gave us on Monday. This highlighted how these legislative passages in front of us are some of the most complex of the entire Bill. In fact, this set of ideas dates back to 2023. A policy briefing note was produced by the Department which was circulated to homeless service providers, statutory and voluntary. There was some engagement and then the proposition, as far as we understood it, was dropped from the Bill that eventually returned. When I asked the Minister’s officials on Monday why it has emerged at this very late stage, they said it is because of the complexity involved. I take them at their word: I do not doubt that at all. It is then all the more problematic that these incredibly complex amendments are going to get a very short period of scrutiny. We will probably end up discussing these amendments for about an hour as we vote on them. We will not get to hear from the homeless sector. Focus Ireland has written to us all expressing real concerns that these amendments could lead to an increase in rough sleeping, which is a view that has been echoed by the Dublin Simon Community also in correspondence to us this week. Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, is a legal expert in this area and has raised similar concerns, as have others. These concerns may be wrong and may not be borne out, but the best way to do legislation of this kind is through the proper, Oireachtas scrutiny process where these things can be teased out and clarified.
We had some really good engagement with the Minister in the three committee sessions we did on the substance of the Bill. The Minister allayed some of my concerns and confirmed others but at least we had that detailed engagement. We are not going to get that to the same extent now.
What are the problems? The first problem is that the decision to provide an appeals mechanism for somebody who is being removed from emergency accommodation, but not to provide the same mechanism for somebody who is denied access to emergency accommodation, is a fundamental oversight. My primary concern is that given the complexity of the decision making involved, a person who could have a legal entitlement to emergency accommodation, who could be legally or habitually resident, could be in a position where a decision is made to deny him or her access to emergency accommodation, and he or she would have no right to an appeal. Sure, there is talk of an informal review and depending on the decision making of the local authority in question, that person may have access to a safety net on a night-to-night basis. However, given that the Minister is creating an appeal in the main body of the Bill for people who are denied access to social housing support or removed from a council list, and these amendments create an appeal mechanism, rightly, in my view, for people who are to be removed from emergency accommodation on certain grounds, not extending that appeal to people who are refused access to emergency accommodation is fundamentally unjust. The consequence of this would be that some of these cases would end up in the courts. That is completely contrary to the intention of this legislation to provide clarity, certainty and good-quality decision making.
I want to be very clear that my concern is not with the competence of individual officers in local authorities. We have long experience of the real challenges in taking decisions around entitlements to State services and habitual and legal residence in the social welfare sphere. We know from that that it takes a level of experience and deep knowledge of the legislative frameworks in question. It requires a consistency of decision making. Therefore, I cannot understand why that appeal is not being extended. While we were told the Attorney General did not recommend it, that is not an actual answer to the question. The real question is why the Minister has not decided it is necessary and provided it? That is concern number one.
If we then look at the section of the legislation of these amendments that deals with removing somebody from emergency accommodation, and again, I am not against this in principle, we all live in the real world and understand that if, for example, somebody is behaving dangerously and putting others at risk, whether they be staff or other men, women and children in emergency accommodation, there has to be a provision for those people to be removed. That provision is there in practice but putting it on a statutory footing makes sense. I have a concern that one of the grounds for removal is that a person has refused a single offer within a period of 24 months prior to seeking emergency accommodation. The standard policy elsewhere in social housing supports, as the Minister knows, is that people get two offers before their file is suspended. There are times when there is a dispute between a local authority thinking an offer is reasonable, and it not being reasonable, for example, offering accommodation for a family outside the catchment area of the school the children are attending, when the family is unable to access public transport.
These types of decision happen and they are enormously problematic.
I also have concerns with the way in which the night-to-night safety net is set up. There is nothing wrong with this in principle but it is completely unclear as to why the Minister has times in it and why the emergency accommodation on a statutory basis is from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. What happens in winter? Are we saying people availing of this safety net will be left outside until 8 p.m.? What happens if we have severe weather events, as we often have, and homeless services have to adapt? We are putting this in legislation, as opposed to a circular or guidance. I do not understand why and I think it will create problems. Homeless service providers have expressed that as well.
This is a disappointing case of a Bill that could have been relatively uncontroversial and could have commanded support across the House and across the statutory and voluntary homeless service providers. However, there are concerns and I raise them specifically in relation to the amendments. On that basis, I have tabled a number of amendments, along with my colleague, Deputy Gould, that seek, at a minimum, to ensure people who are denied access to emergency accommodation have the right to an appeal. That will create a more significant safety net. Where people have a legal entitlement to emergency accommodation or where a decision on the provision of the safety net is not favourable to them when it should have been, they should at least have the opportunity to appeal. If nothing else, that is something the Minister should change in the legislation. On that basis, I have moved the amendment to amendment No. 1.

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Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-08