Nobody denies that landlords are entitled to a reasonable and appropriate profit he says, but legislation must change to allow families long-term tenancy that gives them safety and consistency.
He says the country missed the boat during the financial crisis, which was the right time to build affordable properties but praises Fianna Fáil’s recent proposal of tax breaks for landlords who provide five- or ten-year tenancies.
“A full 48 per cent of new homeless are people who are earning a living and they just can’t make ends meet,” he says.
“They find themselves in a situation where they have to go into emergency accommodation.
“In an Ireland where we are now trading as one of the greatest recoveries in history, where we are the fifth richest country in Europe, and we have only a five per cent unemployment rate, we should not, as a society, allow this to go on anymore.
“We need to help these families to pull themselves up in a way that is viable and that respects the dignity of them and their children.”
We are well down on our house-building targets, we need to get going quicker, Dr Muldoon believes.
“The story of rapid builds of housing has been a complete failure in Ireland,” he says.
“It’s viable in other countries but for some reason we seem to not want to do it, whether the rationale is planning permission, legal, or financial reasons.
“These kinds of barriers are really impacting on children and families and they should have been overcome by now.
Crisis
“Handling a crisis is about overcoming barriers,” he says.
He acknowledges that the Housing Assistance Payment is a factor that the market is “running away from” and which often further excludes from the private rental market those who aren’t entitled to the welfare payment.
As rents move beyond the level of the welfare payment provided, landlords can get better rents on the open market.
“We need to find other alternatives and to speed up our building process,” he says.
With his background of over twenty years in child protection, the Ombudsman believes that there needs to be a statutory or constitutional right to shelter.
Speaking to the Gazette as the Mercy Law Resource Centre launched its Third Right To Housing report on 5 September 2018, he said that “No child or family should find themselves in a situation where they are left waiting for accommodation of a proper standard.”
The Ombudsman says that “We need to change our legislation to make it better and more child-friendly. We want to recognise children within the legislation, which hasn’t shown any regard for children other than as being a dependant.
“They are essentially a number – child two, three, four or five. Their best interests aren’t looked at and their voices aren’t heard,” he says.
Of ten thousand homeless in Ireland, over three thousand are children.
“That’s a whole generation. It’s unbearable to think of what they are going through,” says the Ombudsman for Children.
“They can’t build any kind of family life without knowing where they are going back to at night.”
He acknowledges that some children can manage this uncertainty and may thrive despite it, but says that others will be seriously affected.
“That will be on us as a society, for allowing that to happen. We need to say that all of our people deserve access to a safe, secure, clean home.”
Complaints
As Ombudsman, his role is to make sure that children in Ireland are being treated fairly. His office has noted a 50 per cent rise in complaints in relation to housing over the past three years.
“People are starting to recognise that we are a free and independent alternative to court. We can look at cases in relation to local authorities and see how they allocate housing, and make sure the system is working to a family’s benefit,” he says, albeit the Office has no say in the allocation of housing.
The Ombudsman offers a free helpline and links in with homeless advocates such as Focus Ireland and Simon.
The Mercy Law report examines the “demonstrable gap in legal protection” for some of the most vulnerable children in the state, 3,600 of whom are in emergency accommodation.
It finds that the average period spent by such children in unsuitable emergency accommodation is ten-and-a-half months.
Mercy Law is concerned about the lack of legal time limits on emergency provision as well as the lack of clear minimum standards and safety codes.
Recognition
The Centre believes that a legally enforceable right to housing would provide recognition that “a home is central to the dignity of each and every person and is a foundation of every person’s life.
“Such a right would also mean that the most vulnerable children and families in the state would be better able to vindicate their entitlement to the basic human rights which form the cornerstone of our constitution,” it concludes.