Eviction ban ‘didn’t work’ to curb homelessness, Taoiseach says

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said the Government’s ban on evictions “didn’t work” to stop the rising number of people becoming homeless in the State.

Mr Varadkar also said it was “extremely disappointing” that homelessness has risen to a new record high for a seventh consecutive month despite the stay on evictions introduced last October.

“We had hoped that the eviction ban would result in a fall in the number of people in emergency accommodation, that didn’t work, and now we have to give consideration over the next week or so as to what we can do, both to stem the tide of people becoming homeless but also particularly to increase the number of people we are taking out of homelessness, which we are actually doing in record numbers as well,” Mr Varadkar said in Galway on Saturday.

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He was responding to the latest Department of Housing figures, which showed the number of people in emergency homeless accommodation has reached a new record high of 11,754. The figure included 1,609 families and 3,431 children.

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Asked what hope those people had with the eviction ban likely to come to an end on March 31st, Mr Varadkar said: “There’s always hope. We’ve seen the number of people in State-provided accommodation rise. It’s been rising for seven months now in a row, and that’s extremely disappointing.”

He said: ”It is important to say that they’re not always the same people. We take thousands of people out of homelessness all the time as well. So there is always hope but of course there are people becoming homeless for the first time, and at the moment there are more people becoming homeless than there are people we are taking out of homelessness, and that’s why the overall figure is rising.”

The Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, meanwhile declined to be drawn on plans to end the moratorium on evictions at the end of next month. “It’s a matter that we have discussed at cabinet and I will be briefing cabinet over the next two weeks. We’re assessing it at the moment and so I have no view to offer to you at this stage. It’s a matter for Cabinet,” he said, speaking at the Property Show at the RDS on Saturday.

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Meanwhile, Mr Varadkar said Ireland had “passed the tipping point” in terms of the number of refugees and asylum seekers arriving in the country.

“I think we actually have reached tipping point already. In the past couple of weeks we’ve had to refuse accommodation to hundreds of people seeking international protection. The truth is we have passed the tipping point already.

“We are doing everything we can to improve the situation to find any form of accommodation we can. But we do need to put this into context. This is the biggest refugee crisis that has happened in Europe since the 1940s, since the second World War. Eight million people have left Ukraine. About one per cent of them have come to Ireland and we need to do our bit to accommodate and help as many people we can until that war is over, and people can start returning home,” he said.

Mr Varadkar said finding accommodation for Ireland’s new arrivals was “an enormous challenge”.

“Nearly 100,000 people have come to our country in the past year, mostly from Ukraine but also from other parts of the world seeking international protection. We need to accommodate them,” he said.

“Nobody wants to see people on the streets for whatever reason and we’re pulling out all the stops to do so, whether it’s hotels, or B&Bs or guest houses, whether it’s accommodating refugees in homes, whether it’s modular housing, whether it’s using (Army) barracks, caravans, anything we can find.”