Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Ó Broin for bringing forward the motion. I apologise for not being here at the start of the discussion but I was meeting with the Palestinian ambassador and her colleagues regarding the grave situation in Gaza.

Never in the history of the State have there been so many children growing up without a home. Despite record levels of homelessness that are growing month after month, there are no new Government plans or initiatives to deal with this. A few weeks ago, I asked the Tánaiste what he and the Government were going to do about the record levels of children growing up without a home and what new measures the Government was taking. The response was that it was not taking new measures despite the record levels. That is very serious.

Since I was elected and the Minister took office, I have consistently raised the issue of poor standards in privately run emergency accommodation, assaults and robberies carried out on people staying in privately run emergency accommodation and allegations about staff carrying out assaults and robberies. I brought specific cases to the attention of the Minister. The situation in some, though certainly not all, emergency accommodation is so bad that people who are experiencing homelessness are discussing whether they would be better off going into privately run emergency accommodation. I will bring to the attention of the Minister a conversation that took place online last week. A person asked whether the male emergency accommodation was really that bad in Ellis Quay. He said he would have to wait until morning to see if he could can get into Ellis Quay but had heard scary stories. One of the replies he received from a peer who has also experienced homelessness was that he would be better off in his car or a tent if he had one and that, as a last resort, he could find an abandoned house and break in, which, though extreme is the way things are going. Standards in some privately run accommodation are so bad that some homeless people are being advised by their peers to avoid some of the hostels at all costs. I have been bringing this to the attention of the Minister for several years. What are he and the Government doing about it? It is not okay that some people who are most vulnerable in the housing situation do not feel safe in some privately run emergency accommodation.

The Minister and the Government are running out of time to get this addressed and to do something concrete about it. That applies across the board on the housing situation. We have children growing up without a home. That has a devastating impact on their development. It means children are having to travel miles to get to school, which puts them and their families under huge stress. It means they are away from their friends and they cannot bring friends back after school to play. They do not have anywhere safe, secure and quiet to do homework. If they are participating locally in the GAA, the scouts or anything like that, it rips all of that away from them. It can be absolutely devastating, can have long-term consequences and be hugely disruptive to their education and development. Since the Government decided to lift the eviction ban we have had record levels of homelessness, month after month. If the Government is not going to reintroduce the ban, what is it that it is going to do to actually get homelessness down? It is positive that the Minister has committed to eliminating homelessness by 2030, but the reality is that month after month, the figures are going up. There is no evidence of any Government strategy or action to get children and families out of emergency accommodation over and above any measures that have been put in place so far.

I watched the Tánaiste's speech on Saturday night at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis. There was a long section about housing, but no mention at all not only of the children who are homeless, but of the homeless situation. We have a Government presiding over record numbers of people who are homeless, yet there was no mention in the Tánaiste's speech and no recognition of the problems that we have with homelessness. There were no proposals as to what we are going to do and no specific measures or actions on that. In fact, we have a situation where four local authorities in the last year actually sold more social homes than they built, in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Longford, Roscommon and Sligo. In the middle of a homelessness and housing crisis, four local authorities sold more social homes than they actually built. That is what is happening under this Government. The housing disaster is taking a wrecking ball to the lives of tens of thousands of people across this country. The Government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have made an absolute mess of housing. We have record rents, record homelessness and record numbers of people in their 20s, 30s and into their 40s who are stuck living in their childhood bedrooms. Homeownership has fallen to its lowest level in more than 50 years. It just gets worse and worse the longer this Government is in power.

However, there is hope. There are plenty of examples from across Europe and, indeed, Ireland of how we can solve the housing crisis. In the past in Ireland, when we had much less resources, we were actually very effective in terms of building thousands of high-quality affordable and social homes. I have often referenced the example of Marino in my constituency, where 100 years ago, when the country had no resources at all, when we were starting out and just when O'Connell Street was being rebuilt, we were able to build high-quality affordable purchase homes. To this day, it is a very successful and thriving community. For most of the 20th century, that is what this country did. When we had less resources and the economy was not going so well, we built thousands of affordable homes that gave people a chance to start in life and gave their families a chance to get on and get involved in the community. It has been done before and there is no question that it can be done. Even today, there are good models of how that is being done in the country, but it is simply not being done on the scale that is needed.

I want to raise a point on the four-stage approval process. I have often raised it in the Chamber and with the Minister. The Minister has responded by saying that he cannot rip up the public spending code. I have never asked the Minister or anyone else to rip it up. The public spending code does not prevent the Minister from streamlining and simplifying the four-stage approval process. That has been confirmed independently by the Parliamentary Budget Office. The public spending code is not set out in legislation, so the Government is able to amend the code as it sees fit and, indeed, it has done so. It is not something that prevents the Government from making this process more streamlined. Some of the processes provided for in the public spending code, that are relevant in other areas, are not relevant in the area of housing. For example, we do not need to put forward a business case as to why we need to construct housing. It is blatantly obvious that the need and demand is there. In any event, the four-stage approval process varies very significantly from the public spending code, its processes and so forth. It is not a rationale for justifying inertia here. The Government is well within its ability to amend the public spending code, the four-stage approval process and to streamline it to get more social homes built and get them built faster, as is needed.

There is one last point that I want to make. Today, in this Chamber, the Taoiseach said that we cannot build more than we are currently because there are problems with scaling-up. He said that if we scaled up too fast there could be problems with the quality of the homes that are built. The best way to address that is to invest in skills and training. Where is the fund for the upskilling and retraining of existing construction workers? Where are the resources that are being put into that? Most shamefully, given the gaps we have in skills and that we do not have enough construction apprenticeships and the numbers going into construction apprenticeships are way down on those of ten to 15 years ago and way down compared to 2006, why on earth will the Government not apply the minimum wage so that apprentices would at the very least get a minimum wage for the first couple of years of their apprenticeship? If we are serious about getting the skills here, at the very least we should apply the minimum wage to the young people we are trying to attract into construction apprenticeships.

See this speech in context