Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-07-08 ============================================================ Conor Sheehan (LAB), Limerick City Theoretically, I have no issue with this Bill or with the basic principle of codifying circulars around access to emergency accommodation and social housing eligibility. I do, however, have a big issue with the Minister using the motion to instruct. This is the second time this has happened in a year. I am only in this House a short time. The Minister has effectively tacked a whole new Bill onto a tenuously related Bill that we discussed already on Second Stage and Committee Stage. Far-reaching and significant amendments to the Housing Act 1988 came to us yesterday and they came with a two-hour guillotine and with very little time to discuss the far-reaching consequences they will have for people trying to access emergency accommodation. I have a number of questions. One relates to the strict, arbitrary two-night limit. What is the rationale for codifying that, as opposed to the safety net discretion that exists at the moment? I have no issue with the statutory framework for how local authorities assess who qualifies for emergency accommodation and long-term housing support, but this is effectively stripping away a humanitarian safety net. There will be a loss of discretion. Under the previous policy guidelines, which were more flexible, local authorities could use discretion on humanitarian grounds to provide shelter to people. I am concerned by the rigidity of the Minister's amendments. These strict statutory definitions will remove a vital safety net. They will legally force councils to turn away people who are in unique and complicated situations and who do not fit into neat legal boxes. Will the Minister elaborate on what exemptions will be built into the legislation to counteract this? The local connection test is controversial, in many cases, and can be quite arbitrary. When it is being codified like this, these strict local links will prevent people, in some cases, from accessing emergency placement outside of their home district. I say that because I represent a constituency that is on the edge of another constituency and which has people flying over and back on a bridge between Counties Limerick and Clare. What statutory guarantees or emergency exemptions will be built into the Bill to make sure people in crisis who will not successfully complete these rigid paperwork checks are not legally forced onto the street? For many marginalised and excluded people - I am thinking of Roma people, people from a migrant background and Travellers - it will be impossible for each resident in a family unit, for example, to fulfil the legal and habitual residency test. This Bill and these amendments could justify forcing an individual or family in crisis to navigate a complex, document-heavy bureaucratic housing application to secure a crisis bed for the night. Why did the Minister not bring forward the amendments as a stand-alone Bill or when the Bill was initiated, so we could hear from the people who work in this sphere - the housing charities, the likes of Focus Ireland and FLAC, and the people who will have to deal with the real-world consequences of this? These are foundational changes to statutory housing rights and we have had no proper, full, transparent parliamentary debate and committee scrutiny. We had that on the Bill as initiated but not on what is in the Bill now. I feel the way the Bill has been brought in and heavily amended is being done purposefully in order to bring the figures down in terms of emergency accommodation. The knock-on effect of that will be an increase in rough sleeping. This seems a deliberate policy decision when you look at the demographic of people in emergency accommodation, including those coming from State accommodation, particularly from IPAS, into emergency accommodation. The Bill is being done in this way in order to remove what the Government feels is currently a pull factor. I do not think this is the way to do it. We will see a huge increase in rough sleeping. Going back to the legal and habitual residency condition, this alters the situation and the discretion of the local authority to provide emergency accommodation to anyone meeting the statutory definition of a homeless person. When I look at the amendment to withdraw emergency accommodation, theoretically I have no issue with it, but in the way the Minister has put it forward, the amendment is far too rigid. There are some cases where you have to withdraw emergency accommodation - I am in no doubt about that - such as when an individual is behaving dangerously or is disruptive to other people in emergency accommodation, but we cannot withdraw emergency accommodation from somebody just for refusing one offer. I deal with my own local authority, as every Deputy in this House does. I have had situations where a house that is virtually in the middle of nowhere with no public transport links has been offered to somebody living in emergency accommodation with no car. Let us be blunt, somebody from a migrant community or background might not be able to go and live in a certain area because of genuine concerns for their personal safety. That is fact and I have had situations like that. There needs to be a bit of discretion there. Removing the safety net of emergency accommodation for people most at risk of homelessness and creating these additional administrative barriers might help the Minister's figures, so to speak, at the end of the month but it is going to create a whole host of other problems. It is going to lead to an increase in rough sleeping. I will be supporting Deputy Ó Broin's amendment as well because at the very least, we need to have an appeals process. It cannot be done as rigidly as the Minister is proposing. --- 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/dail/2026-07-08/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-08