Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The housing crisis is just so bad. It is getting worse and worse. We can see it in the figures. There are 4,000 children and almost 14,000 people in total homeless. One illustration of how I know it is getting worse is the increasing number of people coming to see me who are in emergency homeless accommodation and whose ask is not even to get a home but to get into better homeless accommodation. I am dealing with a family - six children and two parents - who have been living in one hotel room for 11 months now, which is having a devastating impact on all their lives. They have no cooking facilities, the father has diabetes and the bad diet is having a seriously bad impact on him. The 11-year-old son has asthma and now has very bad mental health issues. He cries every day. He is really depressed. He is cramped in the same room as seven other people. He has a six-year-old sister who also cries every day and who is not able to get sleep. The mother has told me how depressed she is. These people at this stage are just asking to get into a homeless hub where they will at least have access to cooking facilities. It is horrific what this Government has done, the conditions it has put people in by refusing to use the vacant properties we have, invest in public housing and so on.

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