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

I accept that the Minister has taken measures, but it is self-evident that they are not working. We have 600,000 people living on or below the poverty line, hundreds of thousands utilising food banks, hundreds of thousands in arrears with their energy bills from last year, and the highest number of people in emergency accommodation that we have ever seen. The numbers mask the reality of the dire housing crisis we face.

The Minister must do a hell of a lot more but the Government seems reluctant to do so. I thank Sinn Féin for giving us the opportunity to put forward alternative proposals to do that. First, while this is not in the Minister's brief, it must be done. It is insanity and cruelty to let anybody else end up homeless in the current situation. The Minister can stop people going into homelessness but the Government is equivocating. Even the moratorium that was introduced is not comprehensive. I have raised a case on multiple occasions in this House, which is demonstrative of the Government's failures at multiple levels. A woman and her husband are going to the District Court this weekend with their two children. He is a working man, who has worked all his life. They have never claimed anything off the State in their lives. They are going to be evicted from the home where they have lived all of their lives on grounds of sale. They paid their taxes and paid their rent. There are two children, one of whom has special needs, but because they are slightly over the income threshold for social housing, they are not entitled to the housing assistance payment. They are not entitled to social housing. When they are made homeless, which is going to happen, there is an open question as to whether they are even entitled to emergency accommodation. They looked on Daft for somewhere to rent. The family is a single-income one, with somebody working for a well-known semi-State company. There are new apartments just completed on the N11 and the rent is €2,700 a month. That is totally unaffordable. The family can afford €1,000. Jackie told me that if they pushed it, but it would really impoverish them, they could perhaps get that up to €1,500. They are not entitled to anything. There is no HAP support. They are absolutely goosed.

Again and again, I have asked the Government if it will give HAP payments to people whose incomes are over the threshold and who cannot afford stuff, but nothing was done. I asked if the Government would authorise local authorities to purchase houses in cases where people face eviction and are not on social housing lists because their income is slightly over the threshold, but that has not been done. They are goosed. Jackie believes she will be living in her car at the end of the week. Imagine doing that to working people who have worked all their lives, paid their taxes and so on. They are going to end up homeless.

I will cite another case concerning people on illness benefit who are not given the fuel allowance. I mentioned a case to the Minister the other day of a man who cannot turn down the heating because his wife has cancer. They do not get the fuel allowance because they are on illness benefit and they do not get any of the extra payments. Could the Minister please do something about those things?

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