Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Let me tell the Minister of State why the people of County Mayo know that the longer the Government is in office, the worse things will get for them. The total number of eviction notices issued this year was 15,006. In Mayo, 80 people were issued a notice to quit in the past 12 weeks alone, with a total of 274 since the start of the year. We know that a number of those people will end up homeless. The number of adults, children, families, single people, and pensioners living in Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage-funded emergency accommodation increased from August to September. There are now officially 12,827 people, including 3,904 children, in hubs, hostels and hotels.

Mayo has one of the highest rates of homelessness outside our cities. Mayo has now the sixth highest number of people suffering homelessness. This is shocking for a rural county such as Mayo. There are now 572 people homeless in the west, 220 of whom are children. There are 77 people homeless in Mayo alone. Not only are more people homeless but the hardship they are in is also getting worse. The Government callously lifted the no-fault eviction ban without there being any additional emergency capacity in place. There is no emergency accommodation.

I can tell the Minister of State about a family I met last Saturday. Not even the hotels or bed and breakfast accommodation will take their vouchers. The reason is that the family has three children and one of the children, a three-year old, is autistic. If the Minister of State knows about autism, he will know that living in a confined space in a hotel room is not a conducive environment for children with autism. I wonder if the Government has done any kind of reckoning to see the number of homeless children who are autistic and have different sensory conditions that do not even allow them to get a hotel room or a room in a bed and breakfast accommodation. That is how bad it is. That is why the people of Mayo know that the longer this Government is in place, the worst things will get. They know that the only thing that is going to fix this is a change of direction and an election to get a totally different policy going.

I will let Deputy Ó Broin talk about the rest of it, but the first-time buyers' grant has been proven time and time again to lock people out of the system rather than bringing them in.

See this speech in context