A solution needs to be found for a 78-year-old woman who is weeks away from being made homeless, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.
Mr Varadkar said Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien has been in contact with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council about the case.
In an article in The Irish Times last week, Micheline Walsh said she and her husband, who suffered a “seriously debilitating stroke” some years ago and has numerous health problems, are set to become homeless.
“I am someone who has always rented, usually in long-term arrangements. I have always paid my rent on time and have had excellent relationships with landlords. We have been at our current address for seven years, but our landlord now wants to sell the property,” Ms Walsh said.
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“Since the notice to evict first arrived, I’ve spent months desperately trying to find somewhere else for my husband and me to live.”
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Ms Walsh’s situation was raised by Labour leader Ivana Bacik during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil on Tuesday, who said “unfortunately” they were not the only elderly people facing eviction.
Ms Bacik said it was “unconscionable” to see that 175 people aged over 65 were represented in the current homelessness figure of 12,000.
The Dublin Bay South TD also said that of those 12,000, nearly 3,500 children were living in homelessness, a 23 per cent increase on the same period last year.
[ ‘I’m 78, and by the end of this month I will be homeless’Opens in new window ]
In response, Mr Varadkar said Ms Walsh’s situation was “a very sad case and I think all of our sympathies are with her and her family and a solution needs to be found”.
“I’m confident that a solution can be found, and I know Minister O’Brien has been in contact with Dún Laoghaire- Rathdown County Council to see what solutions can be put in place and usually solutions can be found,” he said.
“It might be the provision of social housing. It might be the tenant-in-situ scheme where the council can buy the property off the landlord. It might be finding an alternative HAP [housing assistance payment] tenancy, and there have been thousands of new HAP tenancies formed in this year alone so solutions do exist and I certainly hope a solution can be found.”
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Mr Varadkar added that extending the temporary eviction was not a solution and just put off the inevitable by a few months.
“It is better to find a solution now than to kick the can down the road. All you do then is build up the number of problems and you make it then harder to solve at the end of that,” he said. “That’s why we think solutions now are better than kicking the can down the road, which is the alternative being put forward by some.”
