Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As I and many others have previously made clear, people are in dire straits. I refer to those who are on the housing lists, those who are being pushed into homelessness and out onto our streets, those who couch surf and those who live in desperately overcrowded conditions with other family members. These people have no possibility of getting a secure roof over their heads. It is not an exaggeration to state that we are facing into the worst crisis relating to social housing and homelessness in the history of the State. This crisis is the result of a catastrophic failure on the part of the previous Government, in the first instance, and it is being compounded by policy failures on the part of the current Administration. The stakes could not be higher.

There are many important issues with which society must deal. If, however, a family does not have a roof over their heads, they cannot function properly within society. How can one pursue educational opportunities, access employment, maintain one's mental health or avoid developing drugs or drink problems if one does not have a secure roof over one's head? It is the most basic consideration and if the Government cannot deliver this for its citizens, then it is unworthy of the name. The previous Government completely destroyed the economy because - quite disgracefully - it treated housing as a commodity for speculation and to enrich its friends in the banks and the property sector. As the Minister of State said, that is what caused the crisis. The current Administration, however, has compounded the problem at every single turn. This debate is taking place three years too late, and tens of thousands of families are paying the price of the Government's failure to address this most serious issue as a matter of urgency.

Everything to which I refer has happened in the aftermath of a period in which we built the largest number of houses ever in the history of the State. We are faced with the greatest crisis relating to homelessness and social housing since the foundation of the State following its biggest ever building boom. This does not add up. There are more empty houses throughout the country than has ever been the case but we are faced with the crisis to which I refer. In July 2012, with some 100,000 people on the housing list, the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government stated it would no longer be directly providing and building council housing.

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