I thank Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. I completely support what is set out in it. It is deeply frustrating and disappointing to engage in this debate again and see the absolute lack of concern on the Government's part. I will come back to this. I remember, when I was engaged in campaigning against the lifting of the eviction ban after Covid, describing the Government at the time as being one of the cruellest Governments we have had since the foundation of the State. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael today hav…

I am.

What is unbelievable is 7,000 households being evicted in the first quarter of this year and not an eyelid batted or an intervention made on the part of the Government. I have looked at it historically. The figures are there. A total of 100,000 households were evicted between 1846 and 1852. This equates to between 15,000 to 16,000 households a year. How many households were evicted last year? The answer is 20,000 households. Not only are we at the highest rate of evictions since the Famine, we have surpassed it. Th…

I said earlier that this Government is the cruellest since the foundation of the State. The Minister waffles on about homelessness prevention but he will not do the one thing that could actually prevent people being made homeless, which is to put in place a ban on evictions. He has become and will be known as the Minister for evictions. We have record evictions and record homelessness, and the Minister will not do the thing that he can do to prevent families and children being made homeless, which is to put in plac…

I absolutely stand over the comparison with the Famine. What the Minister is doing is refusing to acknowledge the trauma that is caused to every household that is evicted. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have stood over, year after year, evictions and homelessness rising. Deputy Browne is just another Minister who is standing over record homelessness and evictions. He said that I have no solutions. I set out my solution very clearly for him, namely a ban on no-fault evictions applying to existing tenants. The Minister is…

The Minister is spinning mistruths that he has put in place the biggest protections for tenants-----

-----when he has not protected existing tenants. He should correct the record.

The Minister has not give any protection to existing tenants.

They are all still as exposed to being evicted onto the streets in the same way they were before the Minister's new measures.

Yes.

I will withdraw that it was a lie; it was a mistruth.

I hope people at home can see the Minister's behaviour, which is being visited on them in the streets.

The Minister never acknowledges the human impact.

More than 7,000 notices to quit were issued during the first three months of this year, which is an increase of 51%. The Tánaiste's response to being challenged on the highest levels of evictions since the Famine was quite shocking and revealing in its lack of concern for the real-life trauma, stress and anxiety of thousands of households, many of them children, families and workers, who were evicted in the first three months of this year. The Government's new rental measures were brought in to benefit the vulture …

He did not even respond in terms of this being trauma and people's lives being thrown upside down - thousands of them. Yet, the Tánaiste says, "Oh well, we will see what we can do." Why will the Government not put a ban on evictions in place?

The Tánaiste says he cares. He says he has compassion. This is what is needed.

Does the Tánaiste accept the trauma?

I thank Deputy Cairns and my Social Democrats colleagues for bringing forward this Bill. It is not a simple area of legislation but our job as legislators is not to shy away from the difficult conversations and to respond to the difficult realities that citizens and people in this country are living through. This is a deeply emotional topic. As a father and a partner, I have experienced the pain of pregnancy loss. I have close friends who had to travel due to a fatal foetal abnormality. They had to put their child …

Home spins.

We are losing nurses, teachers and tradespeople because they cannot afford housing in this city and across the country. Our businesses and public services cannot get workers because of the rents. We are seeing the main supply is vulture fund apartments at €3,500 a month. Who can afford that? Not one affordable house for sale was built by the State in Dublin city last year. What is the Taoiseach doing to ensure workers can afford to live in our city and can afford the rents and house prices? It is a crisis that is t…