Tipperary TD Seamus Healy calls for Dail to be recalled to tackle homelessness crisis

Independent Tipperary TD Seamus Healy has called for the immediate recall of the Dáil to declare a National Housing Emergency to deal with the crisis in Housing and Homelessness.

He said the Dáil should be recalled immediately to legislate for a housing emergency, to declare a moratorium on all evictions until the emergency is over, and to give the government powers to instruct NAMA not to sell land and property it owns to private developers and to make such properties available for social housing. The government must also be instructed to actually issue such an instruction to NAMA immediately”

Deputy Healy welcomed the statement by the St. Vincent de Paul Society calling on the government to declare a National Housing Emergency on Housing and Homelessness.

Its President, Clonmel man Kieran Stafford, correctly identified the, “root cause of the crisis- an overreliance on the private sector to meet housing need.  Children’s well-being can no longer be collateral damage to a dysfunctional housing system.

Deputy Healy said  -The statutory declaration of such an emergency is necessary to put the rights of families to a home above the rights of private property. Under the Constitution, such a declaration enables the public good to be placed above the private property rights of vultures, banks and commercial landlords.

“I have made three attempts, two under the previous government and one under the current government, to have the statutory declaration put into law without success.

In December 2016, the FG-Lab Government defeated my amendment to their housing bill: “29. Dáil Éireann formally declares that a housing emergency exists in the State and while this emergency continues the right of any person to remain in the dwelling in which the person currently resides will take precedence over any property right of any other person.”

“When I made a similar proposal through a private members motion under the current government, it was defeated by FG and the Independent Alliance while Fianna Fáil abstained. 

“The government has the advice of the Attorney General. It knows that such a declaration is required to place the common good in housing above the rights of vulture capitalists.

“Instead, the current government is leaving a shameful anti-human housing measure enacted by the previous government on the statute book. Under the measure a vulture fund selling a dwelling can evict tenants if it can get a price which is 20% higher with vacant possession than with continuing tenants. Then Minister for Housing, Simon Coveney, had told the Oireachtas Housing Committee that this was the maximum interference with private property allowable under the constitution! 

“The Dáil should be recalled immediately to legislate for a housing emergency, to declare a moratorium on all evictions until the emergency is over, and to give the government powers to instruct NAMA not to sell land and property it owns to private developers and to make such properties available for social housing. The government must also be instructed to actually issue such an instruction to NAMA immediately