Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Deputy Boyd Barrett. Before the Minister of State picked up his script and started reading the usual "blah, blah, blah" we get from the Department - with all due respect to the Minister of State, not the Department - I found his contribution interesting. At least there was engagement with the facts, ideology and ambitions related to housing and what they all mean. He made an interesting comment in response to Deputy Gino Kenny about the left-wing view of housing. The much quoted Ms Leilani Farha is not a left winger. She is a rapporteur for the United Nations and her views on housing are quite similar to ours on the left in the House. They are that housing is a human right. In her submission yesterday in Dublin she called on governments to ensure that the markets served housing need rather than investment priorities, and she reminded states that they are first and foremost accountable to human rights.

I came across an example of those human rights two days ago. I got a phone call from a woman who headed up a Ballyfermot helping the homeless group. She asked me whether I could do anything as she was outside Tallaght Garda station where a grandmother, parents and four children were locked up because they sat in in South Dublin County Council offices in Tallaght. They had nowhere to go. They were made homeless on 7 June and put out of private rental accommodation. They had been in three counties in as many nights, shifted from Ashbourne, County Meath to Gardiner Street, Dublin 1 to Rathdrum, County Wicklow. They had been ringing all morning to try to get hotel accommodation and could not get any so they went to the offices of South Dublin County Council in Tallaght and refused to move. They ended up in Tallaght Garda station. A file on the mother has been sent to the DPP, with the possibility of her being charged. She will be charged with defending the human rights of her four children.

I rang the head of the DRHE who was very helpful. She immediately got onto the family and got them sorted in accommodation on the South Circular Road. What she said that was most interesting was that these are the most difficult people to deal with in homelessness because they are big families. I was in a family of seven and we were considered small on my estate as most families had 12 members. This is a big family nowadays, with four children, and hotels will not take them because they need two bedrooms to be accommodated. I do not know where the family has ended up, but the mother may be charged as a consequence of defending the human rights of her children. Does the Minister of State not feel shame about this fact in this day and age? Does he not feel shame and horror that we live in a world that can spend more than half its GDP on investment in land and property that is just used for speculation and investment and causes much worse human misery than I have highlighted throughout the globe and increasingly here in Ireland?

I refer to the comments of the head of the DRHE because we are both agreed on this. I will say to anybody who is being thrown out of private rented accommodation because the HAP is not working and because landlords want to sell up and they have nowhere to go having tried to access HAP to stay put and occupy the premises they are in and not to go into homelessness if they have a family because it is nothing but pure misery and they owe it to their children to stay put. Ms Eileen Gleeson agreed with me because she is at the end of her tether. There is no movement or ability for her to deal with the increasing problem of family homelessness. Many of them are working families. This should make us feel horrified.

There are ten acres of prime land in the middle of Inchicore on St Michael's Estate just down the road from where that family is from. The community in Inchicore has worked hard for the past 17 years to try to get it developed for public housing on public land. The people have met all the agencies, all the local Deputies here today and political parties and they are campaigning strongly. I am not sure if the Minister has met them but if he has, he has made a commitment to do so. They have presented him with a model to provide public housing on public land, a major part of which is a return to the public purse because, under the scheme, the State would be able to rent back to couples who are working but cannot afford to live in the lucrative private rental sector. A total of 60% of the planet's GDP is being used for speculation and profit and not for human needs and human rights. The ideology of Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil will not suit making that change.

6 o’clock

A left-wing ideology is needed in order to facilitate that ultimate change. That is why this is an ongoing battle in our society.

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