Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. There is no doubt that even since Christmas and following the death of Jonathan Corrie that this situation has got increasingly worse. The number who are homeless has nearly doubled and it is mainly families who now find themselves in this situation. I attended emergency meeting after emergency meeting at Christmas and we brought onstream approximately 260 units for single people, for which there has been a flood in demand. We also opened a night café. This major problem is continuing to get out of control.

A major issue currently has been the haemorrhage from rent supplement and RAS with more people ending up homelessness. That is due to landlords making various excuses - some of which are genuine although the majority of them are not - as to why they want to get back their properties or they may state that the banks are taking charge of them but, in many instances, we find that is not the case. We have repeatedly asked why the Government has not introduced some rent controls. It has continually used the term "rent certainty" and I am getting sick of hearing that term. We need to address the issue of rents spiralling out of control. We now have a major housing bubble and a housing rental bubble. It is every bit as bad, or perhaps worse, than what we had during the worse excesses of the Celtic tiger. That is how badly this is affecting many people. It seems there is no rush by any Minister or Government Deputy to introduce a mechanism to stop this haemorrhage. We need to stop it immediately. One of the reason that the HAP initiative was introduced-----