The raw and human impact of the housing crisis was laid bare in heartbreaking fashion on RTÉ last night. With great courage and dignity, Graham King told how he and his family live in a tent. They have nowhere else to go. His wife, Patricia, and his two children, Grayson and Priya, stay in the tent. He stays in the car. They live day to day. Graham said:

I’m on disability and half carer's. My wife works. We have to run a car and feed kids. The expenses add up.

Speaking about the conditions in the tent and how his children are coping, he said:

It was a game at first. It’s not so much anymore. The last couple of nights haven’t been good. Wind, rain - that type of weather has already destroyed one tent. This one is holding up, but I don’t know how long it will last. I haven't got much sleep because I still have to be looking after the tent when the rest of them are sleeping in it.

About his children, he said, "[The children] know they're homeless but they don't know the meaning of what that entails" and that they cope by occupying themselves. There are playgrounds nearby and a walkway, and they feed the ducks,

For more than a decade, governments have been telling people that they will fix housing, yet here we are with a father on national television telling his family's story of living in a tent in Ireland in 2022. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, had no answers for Graham. He and his family are still in that tent today. It is day 53 for them. Incredibly, the family have been told that they earn too much to qualify for State housing support. I have no doubt that viewers last night were looking on with a sense of, "There but for the grace of God go I", a feeling that this could happen to anyone, especially in light of extortionate rents, record levels of homelessness and a maxed out emergency accommodation system. Last Wednesday, in Dublin 7 in my constituency, for example, all emergency shelters bar one were full.

When a working family, a family trying to do everything right, ends up living in a tent, it is surely a sign that the system is broken beyond recognition. For months, Sinn Féin and others have been calling on the Government to introduce a winter eviction ban to halt the flow of people into homelessness. I welcome the fact that it seems the Government has finally listened and will proceed with a ban. It is a first step. This measure must coincide with an accelerated delivery of affordable homes, tackling crisis rents, increasing income thresholds for social housing and an urgent plan to bring vacant homes into use. In the here and now, though, we must ensure that the eviction ban is done right. Cuirim fáilte roimh an gcosc geimhridh ar dhíshealbhú mar chéad chéim chun tabhairt faoi ghéarchéim na ndaoine gan dídean. Caithfidh an Rialtas é a fháil i gceart gan aon mhoill. There are concerns that the eviction ban may not be introduced until December. That would be far too late. Such a delay would result in hundreds more adults and children being forced into homelessness but if we work together, we can pass the right legislation very quickly to prevent this from happening. Will the Government do that? Will it ensure that the winter ban on evictions is implemented without any further delay?

First, I have said repeatedly in this House - and I stand by my statement - that, in my view, housing is the single most important social issue facing our country at this moment in time and access to housing is fundamental to our security, our stability, our health and our progress as a nation. I do not know the individual circumstances in relation to Graham King and his family. I do not know the full background of the housing that they might have had prior to this, but it is not acceptable that a family would be living in a tent.

Equally, though, we need sustained action on housing. The Housing for All plan is the only substantive plan I have seen over the past 12 months - it is only a year old - that deals across the board with a whole range of issues to do with housing. That has been backed up by significant legislation passed in this House, which at times the Deputy's party opposed in vociferously arguing against the retention of the help-to-buy scheme, the first home scheme or affordable housing. Eventually, when it came to the vote, Sinn Féin voted some of that through.

I see no alternatives to the key measures we are taking on social homes. We will have a record number this year in terms of social houses compared with recent times. The key issue for us will be to deliver more houses than the approximately 25,000 that will be delivered this year, which is on target with what we have identified. The Government has been in office for just over two years, we have had two lockdowns as a result of Covid and we have had an exponential increase in building costs, the cost of materials and so on because of the war in Ukraine and the bounceback. Nonetheless, we still have a situation where we have the highest housing delivery now since 2008, the highest commencements on record, the highest planning permissions since 2007, the highest number of first-time buyers since 2007 and the highest number of home buyers since 2008.

However, that is not enough. We are having an impact, but we need to build more than those 25,000 houses. We need to get to 35,000 houses being built, and this means creating the pipeline that can sustain this right through the next number of years. This is something the Government is very focused on. This year, in respect of social houses, builds and so on, between approved social housing bodies and local authorities, we will have thousands of new social homes built. This is the reality. It will be much higher than previous years because a lot of work has gone into this in previous years, which has led us to the stage where we are now building far more social houses for a long, long time. This will have an impact, but it does take time. The Housing for All policy is more than a year old.

To make one final point in this regard, the Deputy mentioned her own constituency. For her own reasons, she has decided to oppose a proposal in Clonliffe. I think more than 1,000 homes were to be provided in the context of that planning application. The Deputy may have a good reason. I acknowledge that everybody can find good reason. Equally, however, if we are all possessed with the urgency of this issue today, and the crisis in housing, do we really have the luxury of opposing projects of this kind?. The Housing for All strategy refers to 33,000 houses, but I think we have to get to 35,000 homes being built annually. Collectively, we must get to 35,000 houses being built per annum and I would just query that.

On the eviction decision, if we can get this legislation through the House, it can take effect from the beginning of November. Again, we are in extremis concerning the situation with the war in Ukraine. More than 50,000 Ukrainians have now come into the country, and far more will access the international protection accommodation service, IPAS. We also have the emergency housing situation. We are, therefore, in unprecedented circumstances. In that context, the Government's decision this morning on the eviction ban is positive and necessary.

There is no disputing that the housing crisis is the single biggest social crisis we face. It is also true that it is the single biggest failure of the Government and its predecessors. The alternative, of course, to being evicted is not being evicted. The alternative to being homeless is to have a roof over one's head. These are the only alternatives at this stage that I believe the Taoiseach and his Government need to understand. The Government has moved on the matter of a ban on evictions. The Taoiseach said it will bring it forward with all due haste. We are anxious to assist the Government in doing this. I suggest we get this work done this week. Let us get this done this week. The Government should publish the legislation, work constructively with the Opposition and let us get this done this week, because families are desperate and terrified at the prospect of losing their rented home as we speak and meet here. We have a duty to protect those families. Let us, therefore, do this as a collective effort. Will the Taoiseach agree that we should get this work done this week? Let us do this week and have no more delays.

I thank Deputy McDonald. We are over time.

Since July, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has given authority to the local authorities to purchase-----

He has not.

-----houses where a tenant in situ, whether under the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, or the housing assistance payment, HAP, was on the cusp of being evicted. Since this measure was introduced, close to 650 houses have been bought or are in the process of being bought by local authorities. That is a significant intervention. Every mechanism the Minister can use to avoid homelessness is being used. That needs to be said. That has happened. He has given the freedom of manoeuvre to the local authorities to buy those houses. Up to 650 houses have been bought or are in the process of being bought, and this is in addition to the wide range of supports that are also provided in a bid to prevent evictions.

Turning to the legislation that the Minister will introduce, today is Tuesday and I respectfully suggest that if we brought something in right now and said that we were going to get it rammed through by Wednesday, then all the Deputies opposite would oppose it and say this was shocking.

No, we would not.

Not on this one; it is too urgent.

The Deputies would, absolutely. It would be condemned as guillotining and all the rest of it. Anyway, 1 November is the date the Minister is targeting. I will take up the offer made by Deputy McDonald. The legislation will be published and we will work with the Opposition to get it through as quickly as possible.

We welcome the Government's U-turn on the winter eviction ban and the announcement earlier. It represents a real change since Thursday when I questioned the Tánaiste on it then. His response was rather lukewarm on the prospect of a temporary eviction ban. We welcome it but we have to remember that for nearly 11,000 individuals and 3,220 children who are homeless and without a secure home that ban will come too late. These figures will only continue to grow after the eviction ban has concluded unless the core problem of a lack of social and affordable homes is addressed because all of us know of so many families who are terrified of being evicted, who are in fear of being evicted or who have just been evicted.

All morning we heard loud and clear the voice of property owners objecting to this ban but we have not directly heard the voices of those affected. One man from my constituency contacted me and he tells me that he is in fear of imminent eviction, he has already been given a notice to quit in the spring and even with a substantial income available to him, he cannot locate an alternative property. He said that one rental property had 700 applications and another had more than 500. He said that any type of extension to his eviction would be welcome as he needs time to locate a new place to live for his family of three. For individuals in that circumstance, including people who are working and people whose incomes may have been sufficient years ago to afford a reasonable rent, a supply of homes is no longer available. There is clearly a serious housing shortage for those on lower incomes and the winter eviction ban, while welcome, does not address that issue.

As my colleague, our housing spokesperson, Senator Moynihan, said, there are three key measures we are calling on Government to implement to address the issues that will continue to arise for those families in fear of homelessness in the spring, after the ban has been lifted. First, we are asking Government to rapidly expand the tenant in situ scheme. I am glad that so many houses have been or are in the process of being bought by local authorities; I think the Taoiseach mentioned a figure in excess of 600. However, we need to see a consistent approach across local authorities and to see the five or six months the eviction ban is in place used to ensure that local authorities will map out housing need and identify those households at risk of homelessness. Then the Government should provide councils with the necessary resources to cut through the red tape surrounding the tenant in situ scheme and ensure we can return houses, many of which were originally council houses, to social housing stock and provide more sustainable futures for those renting. Second, the Government needs to invest in building more social homes and to ensure targets are met for that. Third, the Government needs to take on the Residential Tenancies (Tenants' Rights) Bill 2021 Bill that Labour introduced a year ago but which has still has not been progressed and which would have, if adopted by Government, provided much greater security for renters across the country. In my constituency there are twice as many households as the national average in rental accommodation. Many people are relying on the mercy of landlords and they need to have a more stable and secure future.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue, which is more specific to the issue of the winter eviction ban. The residential tenancies (deferment of termination dates of certain tenancies) Bill 2022 was approved by Government this morning and will be published shortly. The Bill gives greater security of tenure to tenants during the coming winter period. Specifically, the Bill will defer certain notices of termination served on tenants for the period on the day after the date of the passing of this legislation and ending on 31 March 2023.

That is not good.

The Bill proposes to stagger the end of the protections afforded in it to ensure there is no cliff-edge impact on 1 April next year. Importantly, the Bill applies to licences and tenancies in student-specific accommodation and to student tenancies in the general rental market. The Bill is required, as I said earlier, due to the ongoing acute supply constraints in the residential rental sector and the increase in homelessness presentations over the winter. We want to reduce the burden on homelessness services and the pressure on tenants and the residential tenancy market generally. The Bill is also designed to mitigate moral hazard insofar as the protection will not extend to a tenant who simply chooses not to pay his or her rent or to breach other tenant obligations.

We brought in a similar ban during the Covid pandemic so it is not the first time we have done this. There is a context for it, which there has to be, and we are in the middle of a serious energy crisis with an exponential increase in pricing. There has also been a huge migration flow because of conflict in the world, particularly the war in Ukraine.

All of this is creating pressures on residential accommodation more generally and on the availability of emergency accommodation that the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage can rely on to house people who suddenly become homeless for a variety of reasons. That is the context for the intervention. There has to be balance to it.

Deputy Bacik referenced the in situ scheme the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, introduced last July, where essentially he said to local authority managers they were free to buy houses if somebody is being evicted because a property is being sold. As I said, close to 650 properties have been purchased or are in the process of being purchased by local authorities as a result of that. That tenants in situ are at risk of being evicted is a significant issue in itself. I take the Deputy's point. We are open to ensuring we can intervene to prevent evictions of this kind. It is a new departure in respect of local authority discretion. We are urging local authorities to do this. Deputy Bacik has called for greater consistency. The Minister is working on this in his communication.

The Minister has met representatives from the homelessness sector, the NGO sector, the Irish Property Owners Association, the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers, the Residential Tenancies Board and the Dublin Region Homeless Executive to get a proper sense of the situation from their perspective and how they see this Bill.

It is welcome to hear more detail of the proposed Bill. We will work with the Government, as will all in the Opposition, to ensure it is passed as soon as possible to see protections for those renting through the winter. Will the Taoiseach also commit to introducing stronger legislative backing for the tenant in situ scheme? The problems are the red tape, the inconsistency and the fact that last year the State spent €893 million on subsidies to private landlords, such as the HAP. This is money that could have been better spent by being invested in returning housing to social housing stock. Many of the homes that were previously council homes went into private ownership and are now in the private rental sector. We need to see these homes being brought back into social housing. We could strengthen the tenant in situ scheme by, for example, requiring that if landlords want to evict a tenant in order to sell they must notify the local authority first and give it a right to purchase. This is the type of provision that would make the tenant in situ scheme much more meaningful and effective in protecting families from homelessness and ensure we have a more sustainable housing system in future for those on low incomes and those in the squeezed middle who can no longer afford spiralling rents.

The HAP scheme and the RAS have been there for a long time. If we did not spend the money on the HAP, there would be far more people homeless. It is not a simple matter of saying we should get rid of HAP and start building.

I did not say that.

I know. I am articulating a basic principle around this. We will build more houses and more social homes, as we are doing and will be doing consistently. I have seen no mechanism from any other party. Some parties say we should be building 20,000 social homes. There is no capacity at present to build 20,000 social homes. It is not there. We all need to be honest. It is all good for Deputies to go on television and radio and state they think there should be 20,000. They write a paragraph and it is a policy that we should have 20,000 instead of 10,000. That is not a policy.

We are putting forward sensible proposals.

I am making this point generally. This is what gets said. To deal with the HAP-----

The Taoiseach might address the Deputy's question.

I am doing so. I am speaking about the HAP. The only way to deal with it is to build more social houses but that will be over time. As we build more social houses, we will reduce our reliance on the HAP and the RAS.

Let us strengthen the tenant in situ scheme.

That is what the Government is doing. That is what we are committed to doing. We will work with the Opposition on any constructive proposal it has on this issue and on the Bill that will come before the House in the next while.