Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

If the Minister wanted to measure the scale of his failure, he could do a lot worse than to look at the workload now placed on the shoulders of the volunteers at Penny Dinners in Cork city. Penny Diners has been feeding the poor and the homeless in Cork city since at least the 1880s - some say since the Famine times. This Christmas, these volunteers have to organise 2,000 food hampers. Each week they have to serve 2,000 meals, a twentyfold increase in the past decade. They serve meals to families with small children. More than 200 children are homeless now in the Cork-Kerry area alone. They serve food to people with jobs. Cork’s homeless community now includes members of the working poor. Damningly, Penny Dinners, relatively recently had to keep its doors open at night for the first time since 19th century to provide an alternative to people who otherwise would be forced to sleep out on the streets.

On Thursday, thousands will march on the streets of Cork and Dublin in solidarity with the homeless and to demand action on homelessness. There is a glaring need for a massive increase in social and affordable housing, drastic cuts in rent and a total ban on evictions into homelessness. The people who march know that they will not get these from the Minister. They have no confidence in him or in this Government. Many of them have no confidence in the entire system, a system which puts the profits of vulture funds and landlords above the needs of workers, young people and the homeless.

The Government may just about survive this vote later If it does, it will be with the connivance of a Fianna Fáil Party that attacks the Government on the doorsteps but props it up in the Dáil. If it does survive, it will be with the votes of the Dáil’s very own unmentionables, the likes of Deputy Lowry, Deputy Grealish and the invisible man himself, Deputy Dara Murphy. A Government that relies on votes such as these to survive is truly a bankrupt Government and a Government that is clearly on its very last legs.

See this speech in context